Or the ghost of Marcel Duchamp
Again another torched machine. Digitally cut out and floated against the sky-blue backdrop like held breath. (See Machina Incensa II)
It is the skeleton of a former electric scooter or moped when it was still alive. The hub motor visible in the rear wheel is characteristic of an electric hub-drive motor.
My slightly uncanny fascination with these remains is two-fold. On the one hand is an almost forensic interest in what caused this destruction. Originally I assumed that an active arsoning took place. The finding place far away from a public roadside suggests that at night a burning match is thrown at the petrol soaked machine and whoosh. But I met a man at the ‘crime scene’, let’s call him M. and he suggested that the machine was joy-ridden so hard that it finally self-ignited. Gosh!
By the way, it was M. who a few days earlier lifted the machine up from a lying position and moved it to a wall near by where it could be left standing up. He said he couldn’t bear having it lying in a green meadow which represented almost a sacrilegious act to him.
On the other hand I designate the found and violently treated object, self-ignition or arson or whatever, as an art object. In artistic terms this is called a Readymade and Marcel Duchamp was an artist who first formulated and practiced this concept. His most famous Readymade is Fountain (1917), a standard urinal resting on its back on a plinth. Here in this visual montage I imagine the Machina Incensa next to Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel from 1913 (the first two versions of the wheel don’t exist anymore, but replicas are still exhibited around the world today).
The act of placing commonplace objects in revered art spaces like museums and galleries is an important part of the Readymade concept. Placing them like this enables a new perception and contemplation of object or installation. Like i.e. the installation My Bed by Tracey Emin at the Tate Gallery in 1999.
And to designate commonplace objects in this way as art is an almost ironic way to question the general views about artistic creation. Artistic output and value don’t arise primarily from crafts and skills but from conceptional ideas.
Finding place: Highfield Country Park, Stockport, Greater Manchester, video and visual editing: Klaus d Michel ©2026.