Built from the parts of the iconic VW beetle, Fontein der tranen was conceived as a memorial to the victims of car traffic. In the framework of Petromelancholia, it can also be interpreted as a memorial to the petromodern era. The beetle with its smooth edges, its humble size and its friendly outline has been one of the world's most popular cars – quite the opposite to the aggressive appearance of a muscle car or the aristocratic aura of a classic limousine. Nevertheless, the car which was conceptualized as a german state project during the Nazi era and produced more than 21 million times since, has always been part of the calamitous legacy of car culture. The death toll of car traffic in the post war era exceeds fatalities by wars, genocides and terrorism, and the mass use of combustion engines in cars – as well as the production of micro plastics as a result of tyre wear (an estimated 90% of the worlds micro plastic pollution stems from car traffic) – has been one of the major factors of the ecological disasters we are facing today.

The Rotterdam artist Olaf Mooij (1958) has dedicated his artistic practice to the contradictory legacy of petromodernity's most desirable agent. Almost everyone in the Netherlands knows his Braincar, a car whose top has been transformed into a large brain.