Exhibition

Turtle 1 – building a car in Africa could be seen as a preview exhibition at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, where the project was shown for 6 months as part of the group manifestation Project Rotterdam. While the media had extensively covered the building process, the full story with its final conclusions has never been shown before. The dream between the initiators and local partners in Suame Magazine has come to an end, yet what did we learn? Which lessons can we use in the future? Is it possible to produce informal car factories alike? What are the pitfalls?

From 20 April until 30 October Turtle 1 will be on show again. The first African car made from scratch is part of the group show AutoPhoto at Fondation Cartier (Paris) from 20 April – 31 October, an exhibition dedicated to photography’s relationship to the automobile. The story of the Turtle is translated to a dense presentation, including photos of the shopmakers and videos of the challenging construction.

Paradox is currently preparing a larger travelling exhibition. The hosting venues will be transformed into the Turtle Lab: a research institute, educational centre, production space and showroom all-in-one! Here, the customer stands on the front line: he can chose his car by being in direct contact with the building team who assemble and design the vehicle in merely a few weeks. Where large car manufacturers hide their trade secrets and keep all brainstorm sessions behind closed doors, the visitors of the Turtle Lab will receive insight into the functioning of a large, informal factory. They learn about the origins of the first prototype and, at the same time, become part of the growing network that can make use of the research made by Smets and Van Onna, as there are numerous industrial clusters to which their concept could be applied.

Book

Five years after Smets and Van Onna set foot on Ghanaian soil, it is time to reflect on what has been achieved. The book Turtle 1 – building a car in Africa takes the reader on an fascinating journey through the authors’ experiences as naïve outsiders – with no know- ledge of cars – who wanted to find out how an informal economy works.

Designed by Ko Sliggers – known for his award-winning cookbook about Sicilian cuisine Koken Tussen Vulkanen, the book is from start to finish filled with humorous and insightful images and video’s. Warna Oosterbaan, author of various titles such as Motorziel: kleine sociologie van een machine (2010) leaves no question unanswered in his thoughtful interview.

To fully understand the functioning of the Suame Magazine, a hand drawn map by Melle Smets is part of the book. The pull out drawing can be found at the back of the publication. Unique for a book is the inclusion of videos that can be called up on numerous pages by scanning the QR codes.

Turtle 1 is published by Paradox and Verlag Kettler.