After a summer attending some of the world’s premier art festivals and conferences, one of my first few encounters with Canadian culture was the Demolition Derby at the Madoc County Fair.
Here’s how they work: some local boys find a car or truck that they wouldn’t mind smashing up a bit. They give the vehicle a fancy paint job, find sponsors to cover vehicle upgrades and the $75 registration fee for the Derby. Then they show up and smash their car into the other people’s cars until their car won’t run any more and has to be towed out of the field by a tractor.
The car that hit other cars the most, and that {{popup derby3.jpg ouch! 350×262}}still kind of runs, wins.
There are a few rules: you can’t hit another car on the driver’s door, you have to stop for a red flag (usually indicating someone is on fire), and you mustn’t behave in an unsportsmanlike fashion (this can basically be avoided by refraining from making rude gestures at the flagmen).
There was high spirit on display. Some of my favourite slogans painted on the cars include: “If you ate today, thank a farmer”, “Is that all you got”, “Lick’n”, “Thanks to Mom, Dad, God, …”. And though it was an extremely cold night, people fortified themselves with hot chocolate and stayed late into the night to cheer their favourite drivers and watch some pretty {{popup derby1.jpg smash 350×262}}spectacular smash-ups. {{popup derby2.jpg crash 350×262}}Ouch!
At some point during the event it occurred to me that the Demolition Derby is not all that different than some of the other, more art-oriented events I frequent, like the Sumo Robot Challenge and some of Istvan Kantor’s work. Fire, wheels spinning, the crunch of crumpling metal… good solid entertainment in Linz, Austria or in Madoc, Canada; in the white cube or at the county fair.