My Death is Pending... Because (2017)

What if the game you are watching has another game being played, and only you and a self-selecting group of individuals know the rules to that other game? MY DEATH IS PENDING... BECAUSE. documents- No .9, the final performance in the 30-year series by the world-renowned conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll. For the performance, Carroll participated in a demolition derby at the Irwindale Speedway in Southern California during its annual "Night of Destruction." Carroll drove a 1985 Buick Riviera-the car that she previously crashed into the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich, Germany, in 2004/2005 for Late, a performance in the same series. The series emerges from a Rube Goldberg/stream-of-consciousness methodology-a conceptual process where something simple is extracted from a set of complex ideas that continue to unfold until the process comes to a complete stop. Carroll inherited the Buick Riviera from her late father, who purchased it as it was the last year the model was manufactured by GM at its Linden, New Jersey, plant. No. 9 involved Carroll driving the Riviera, retrofitted by the award winning design firm Ball/Nogues Studio in L.A., in a specific pattern-an infinity loop-during the demolition derby. Another game was being played within a game. A group of people attending the derby knew the rules and that another game was being played-that is, until Carroll either won the derby or No. 9- the Buick Riviera was stopped by being demolished.