M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

O
ver the last several decades, the stray shopping
cart has quietly become an integral part of the
urban and suburban landscapes of the
industrialized world. To the average person, the stray
shopping cart is most often thought of as a signifier of
urban blight or as an indicator of a consumer society
gone too far. Unfortunately, the acceptance of these
oversimplified designations has discouraged any serious
examination of the stray shopping cart phenomenon.
Until now, the major obstacle that has
prevented people from thinking critically about stray
shopping carts has been that we have not had any
formalized language to differentiate one shopping cart
from another.
In order to encourage a more nuanced and
comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, I
have worked for the past six years to develop a system
of identification for stray shopping carts. Unlike a Linaean
taxonomy, which is based on the shared physical
characteristics of living things, this system works by
defining the various states and situations in which stray
shopping carts can be found. The categories of
classification were arrived at by observing shopping carts
in different situations and considering the conditions and
human motives that have placed carts in specific
situations and the potential for a cart to transition from
one situation to another.
The resulting “Stray Shopping Cart Identification
System” consists of two classes and thirty-three subtypes
that can be used singly or in combination to describe and
thereby “identify” any found cart. One of the unfortunate
difficulties in implementing a situational taxonomy of this
kind is that one is often required to speculate about
where a cart is coming from and where it is going next.
While this uncertainty can at times be vexing, it must be
remembered that this system is the first attempt to
categorize and analyze the transient nature of the
shopping cart. The refinement of this system is an
ongoing process.
STRAY SHOPPING
CARTS
Julian Montague spent six years roaming the streets of America, photographing an integral element of the industrialised
world: the stray shopping trolley. In this highly acclaimed project exhibited in the fall of 2006, his method was to build a
system of classification around this iconic but mundane object.
Text by Julian Montague, Questions by Sonja Britz
25
You have explained that investigations on the
shopping cart as urban phenomenon have been
blighted by oversimplification. Does your choice
of the adjective ‘stray’ and its inevitable
associations with abandoned animals - especially
dogs - attempt to push the argument into an
arena of human accountability?
I use “stray” because I think that it allows for more space
to recognize that the cart is on a trajectory of its own. If I
were to use the adjective “lost,” I think it would
overemphasize the cart’s relationship to the store from
which it originates. A stray dog has a life of its own, while
a lost dog is always trying to find its way home. In regard
to where I am pushing the argument, I think I need to
briefly explain the difference between the “voice” of the
project and my own. I think of the project as being
authored by a character who takes stray shopping carts
extraordinarily seriously. His concerns are those of a
taxonomist; he wants to figure out how to accurately
describe and name the various states in which a stray
shopping cart can be found. He makes no value
judgments about the presence of stray carts
environmentally, socially or aesthetically. As an artist, and
the author behind the author, my view of the cart is a bit
more complicated.
On one level, I am interested in using the cart to
conduct an experiment with language (in particular
naming) and perception. By giving an absurdly
complicated (yet accurate) lexicon to a mundane
phenomenon, I’m hoping to start a cognitive process that
will illuminate a sector of peripheral urban space for the
viewer. This generally works; people often tell me that
after encountering the project, they begin to see stray
shopping carts everywhere. My second aim is to erode
the way that the stray shopping cart functions as a sign in
our culture. This has probably been less successful. The
stray cart is currently used in both high and low culture