Produced and directed by Ant Farm (Chip LORD, Hudson MARQUEZ, Doug MICHELS)
With: Chip LORD, Doug MICHELS, Stanley MARSH III.

“Cadillac Ranch Show” is a document of Ant Farm’s major site installation, the Cadillac Ranch, which was commissioned by Texas millionaire Stanley Marsh III. Ten Cadillacs, vintage 1948 to 1963, were buried fin-up in a field off Route 66 in Amarillo. The image of ten Cadillacs pointing upward against the sky is a comically subversive homage to the rise and fall of the tail-fin as an icon of postwar American consumer excess. Footage of the burial of the cars is intercut with Cadillac commercials that promote a fetishized ideal, the ultimate American Dream. A pop spectacle that parodies consumerism with a tongue-in-cheek nod to 1970’s site art, the Cadillac Ranch is an ironic celebration of the “grotesque and wonderful” tail-fin as the ultimate expression of wasteful design in American culture.

A 1984 postscript to the tape features an interview with former Ant Farm members Chip Lord and Hudson Marquez by Channel 10 News, Amarillo, on the ten-year anniversary of the Cadillac Ranch. The artists address the piece’s evolution from a conceptual site sculpture to an interactive, public roadside attraction, now rusted and graffiti-covered.

Source: “Electronic Arts Intermix: Video”, edited by Lori ZIPPAY, 1992

“Cadillac Ranch Show” 1974/81