Clootie Cart and Wishing Well a sculptural intervention

The 'clootie' cart is designed to be positioned in places of tension. A clootie is a ribbon or a rag. To tie a clootie is to perform a ritual, it is probably pagan. A clootie cart is a mobile unit (trolley) for the acknowledgment and dispersal of positive thoughts - an anti-consumerist device created to encourage the annulment of homogeneous thought and activity - to provoke debate on the distribution of wealth. The cart can be moved to where it is most needed.

The clootie cart comes with a cardboard box of rags, a cardboard sign and a bucket of magic water.

The clootie cart and wishing well were active at the Hanover Project from 9th - 27th April as part of three weeks of actions and interventions under the title 'Messy democracy. organised by art collective @.ac as part of their ongoing project 'The Precarious University'.

'...prioritising difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems.' (Foucault in Deleuze and Guattari 2003: xv

CLOOTIE CART

This is a clootie cart. As far as I know, another clootie cart doesn’t exist in the world but I might be wrong. A clootie cart means something but I’m not quite sure what exactly.* You can tie a clootie if you want to. As you tie the clootie you could make a wish or think about someone you love. The clootie cart has wheels, so it could be pushed along and into places of tension, it could be useful for carrying wood or stone.

This is a wishing well. The wishing well contains magic water. You could throw money in the wishing well and make a wish. If you pay the water it might be more inclined to grant your wish. You can take a coin and throw it in the well if you want to. If you climb the ladder the coin has further to fall and might land heads up, which is especially lucky**

*Sometimes trolleys are useful for storage. If you move around on the streets, if you have to sleep in a shop doorway, a trolley can be piled high with stuff. You can take the stuff with you as you move around. You can own the stuff, if it’s in a trolley next to where you sleep and it’s your trolley you can call it a chariot. It belongs to you; you have belongings

(Aren’t supermarkets great? They sell lots of essential items wrapped in plastic and all under one roof. I don’t need to choose my own produce or worry about how it came to be there. I don’t even need to go outside if I don’t want to. Speakers tell me about special offers and play music designed to make my shopping experience more rewarding)

** Myths exist to deter us from accidentally or deliberately questioning the system