KIT

PASSIVE RESTRAINT SYSTEMS
01.18–02.25.2001
Room 2

Humanity has become so alienated from itself that it has come to experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order. – Walter Benjamin

The impact of the accident holds a fascination for KIT. Like playful children, they dissect a brief moment of violence featured in the installation *Passive Restraint Systems*. Having already addressed issues of aviation safety on various occasions, this collective—scattered across the globe—settles in and secures itself here, in the driver’s seat of a car in the age of High-Speed Access. Whether in front of a video game screen or on highways of asphalt or gigabits, safety is a brake on the thrill of speed. In the space of a second, the airbag becomes the object through which salvation and a jolt of awareness are possible.

A single second can change your life; this moment is replayed a thousand times in a video projection where an airbag “explodes” in slow motion like a lung taking a breath. A single second broken down into hundredths of a second to contemplate the scene in slow motion: your body propelled forward, the car striking a solid object, the airbag bursting from its hiding place.

As a contemporary Agencetourix, a violent reckless driver, and a motion detector, KIT crystallizes this extreme experience where time and space collide. The result is a deliberate aestheticization of violence—not to extract a pro-futurist narrative from it, but to cast doubt on the notion of progress.

The trust placed in technology paints a striking portrait of human beings as guinea pigs—possessed, swept up, and blinded by the pursuit of absolute safety, the cleanest, most reassuring, and flawless systems. Fatal error: the chivalrous, life-saving shield is nothing more than a “skin,” a coating, an inflatable façade that hides and holds its breath.

H. Ford