Crash '87

Crash '87 - Discogs Release Information

  • Track: Crash ’87

  • Artist: This Window 

  • Release: Appears on the cassette Extraction (1989, EE Tapes, Belgium)1

  • Format: C40 Chrome Cassette, experimental/industrial/abstract

  • Compilation Context: The track is part of a body of work that merges sound collage, dark ambient textures, and conceptual art. The cassette itself is a curated sequence where tracks bleed into one another, resisting discrete consumption and instead demanding immersion.

Crash ’87 is not a standalone single but embedded in a larger experimental release that foregrounds fragmentation, layering, and the instability of recorded media.

The accompanying video, shows a mouse in the palm of hands and links to The Genetics of Art and the National Mouse Club2.

  • The mouse becomes both a literal and symbolic subject: a fragile, living creature held in human hands, and simultaneously a metaphor for control, breeding, and manipulation.

  • In the context of Crash ’87, the mouse imagery resonates with the fragility of systems—biological, cultural, and technological—that can be “crashed” or disrupted.

Specimen as Concept: The Sable Mouse and the Chromatics of Eugenics

“Softcopy” exhibition at the Kimura Gallery (University of Alaska, 3–17 April 2006) invited artists to articulate a concept that could, in theory or practice, be made—foregrounding language as both medium and provocation. Within this framework, Peter Bright’s contribution explored the intersection of genetics, aesthetics, and speculative biology through the lens of visual art.

Bright’s exhibited work centred on the pursuit of a disappearing phenotype: the Sable Mouse, a genetic variant not seen for nearly a century. This endeavour was not merely scientific but deeply aesthetic. As a visual artist, Bright approached the project as a quest for colour—seeking to resurrect a specific chromatic expression through selective breeding, and in doing so, interrogating the ethics and poetics of eugenics. This quest was successful and he was awarded the Sable Cup by the National Mouse Club.


The Sable Mouse: ‘Eye black. The top colour shall be a rich dark brown, as dark as possible, from nose to tail root; the belly colour to be as rich a golden tan as possible and the shading from top to belly to be gradual, even and pleasing, with no line of demarcation nor any blotch, patch, ticking or streakiness. There should be no white hairs whatsoever.’

This became a symbol of lost beauty and engineered rarity. The project drew upon archival standards from the National Mouse Club, exposing the aesthetic codes that govern biological selection. The exhibit functioned as both documentation and critique, mapping the search for genetic markers while reflecting on the human impulse to control and curate life.

In the gallery context, the mouse became the artefact—a fragile creature held in human hands, and a metaphor for power and manipulation. The work challenged viewers to consider the implications of breeding for perfection, and the role of colour as both visual seduction and ideological construct.

By merging conceptual art with genetic inquiry, the piece positioned the Sable Mouse as a site of tension: between extinction and revival, nature and artifice, control and vulnerability. It asked not only what can be made, but what should be made—raising questions of ownership, creation, and the Frankensteinian cost of perfection.

Philosophical Reading of the Video

The project can be read as a critique of anthropocentrism:

  • The human hand becomes both cradle and cage.

  • The mouse is not just subject but collaborator, its presence destabilising the human claim to authorship.

  • The “crash” is not only an event but a methodology—embracing breakdown, error, and mutation as generative forces in art.

In short: Crash ’87 is more than a track—it’s a node in a network of ideas about fragility, control, and collapse. The Kimura Gallery exhibition amplified this by situating the work in a space where sound, image, and philosophy converge, turning a small mouse into a profound meditation on power, vulnerability, and the genetics of art.

References

1This Window – Extraction (1989, C40, Chrome, Cassette) - Discogs. https://www.discogs.com/release/941799-This-Window-Extraction

2https://peterbright.info/weblog/the-genetics-of-art-national-mouse-club/








Location: United Kingdom

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