If art is meant to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, Summernats is a masterpiece.
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But unlike the National Gallery's Pollock, its Nolans, and its Seurats, Summernats is not a permanent fixture.
Another year, and the echoes of exhaust fade over the horizon, as all that remains are the memories and tyre residue.
The roar of revs through straight pipes or the marks made by whitewall tyres are harder to romanticise when it's your child that's been woken or your driveway that's been stained.
Discomfort, however, has always been a companion to progress. Even Canberra's great grandfather - Walter Burley Griffin - who likely never considered his Northbourne Avenue a drag strip, would break into a smirk if he saw a group of kids sitting at an intersection, giving the "send it" gesture to passing motorists.
Like all great art, Summernats is political. In particular, the politics of identity. It's dangerous to engage in us-and-them-isms; to label, generalise, pigeonhole, or worst of all, scapegoat.
But let's. Because if art is meant to disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed, it's important to understand who is who.
We are Canberrans. We are the comfortable. And we are not without sin. Our home is often called a bubble, and it's an apt description.
We live good lives. When it comes to reasonable transit to a national institution, we're spoilt for choice. We have the beauty of the bush and the convenience of a city.
We're public servants and consultants and Defence employees. Largely, the problems that face the rest of Australia, don't face us.
They are the revheads. The car buffs. The auto aficionadas. The disturbed. Their crimes are apparent. Parking, for starters, in otherwise nice, respectable suburbs such as Ainslie and Braddon is compromised by sprawling V10s mounted on curbs. Their cars are louder than our cars: seemingly almost by design. And try getting a table at the Old Canberra Inn or a pool table at the Civic Pub.
And I'm sure there are plenty of Summernat attendees who listen to classical music on their rear-mounted subwoofers and pour E10 into the tanks of their Holden utes. Just as there are plenty of Canberrans who enjoy the odd Jack Daniels and coke, or the occasional ballad from Jimmy Barnes.
In fact, I would consider myself one of them. I've been in Canberra four years now, but when asked am always quick to correct that I am a "Queenslander on an extended vacation".
And yes, I rode dirt bikes growing up. And yes, I went pigging one time. And yes, a girlfriend of mine once said she fell in love with me when I told her my favourite movies were (in order) "Mad Max 2, Mad Mad 1, and Mad Max 3".
And yes, that same girl broke up with me four months later when she found out I wasn't being ironic.
For the disturbed amongst the comfortable (or even the comfortable amongst the disturbed), Summernats is a homecoming.
Like any homecoming there's a parade, there's drinking, there's frowning, there's fighting, and there's Homecoming King (congratulations Livij Krevatin!).
This collision of the comfortable and the disturbed only happens here. Normally, events of this size and nature are relegated to the Bathursts and Gold Coasts of Australia (namely, Bathurst and the Gold Coast). Chic Henry, Summernats founder, is credited with building a dedicated burnout track at Exhibition Park.
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But he should be credited, amongst names like Abramovi, Ono, and Parr as a revolutionary performance artist. It was his decision to mainline some adrenaline not into Launceston, or Wagga Wagga, or Mackay, but straight into the veins of the heart of the nation.
Summernats is art. And, like all good art, it teaches us something. If Canberra is a bubble, Summernats is the needle that pricks that bubble. A reminder that our lives, aren't the only lives. If Canberra is the utopia many of us claim it is, then we are reminded of what Thomas More said:
"It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub."
Or rather, while the Canberran prefers their hybrid, the gearhead prefers their clubsport.
- Tom Glassey is a Queenslander on extended vacation in the ACT.