The front is an ancient Oldsmobile grille, almost rusted beyond recognition. It's attached to a moldy old steamer trunk from someone's attic. On top of the trunk is a large light-bulb thing with an inflated rubber glove inside.

The steamer trunk has rearview mirrors and sits on top of a tangle of bent and twisted spoked wheels that look like a bicycle with polio. Dragging behind it is a ball and chain like a dinosaur tail.

It could be a pile of junkyard parts accidentally welded together by a random bolt of lightning.

Or it could be art.

If it's just a pile of landfill leftovers, all it says is "Someone call Rumpke.'' But if it's art, it might say something more serious. My guess is something about being prisoners of our automobiles.

There is probably some political statement locked inside that trunk. But I'm not dying to raise the lid and let it out.

Welcome to the Fringe Festival. Two weeks (through May 23) of sculpture, paintings, performance artists and lots of plays.

"It's like a Taste of Cincinnati for the theater,'' said Brian Phillips, artistic director for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. "It's not cutting edge just for the sake of being cutting edge. But it's a chance to do things you can't usually do because they're not financially viable.''

That usually means stuff about AIDS, sex, race, women's issues, sex, gays and AIDS.

And that means Cincinnati's famously short fuse for offensive art could be lit again. But Phillips and Fringe Fest organizer Jason Bruffy don't think so.

Some plays and performance artists will go "outside the bounds of normal theater,'' Bruffy said, but others may be OK for "Joe and Jane from the 'burbs.''

Bruffy sees it as "a big step'' toward making Cincinnati a national magnet for artists. Only five other cities have Fringe Fests, he said, putting us among the in-crowd of San Francisco and Seattle.

"It's a place to take risks. Art cannot survive and thrive if it can't test itself and try things out.''

That's a good idea. If they keep trying things out, they might finally figure out what works. From what I've seen lately, shocking art is losing the Shock America Contest to pictures from Iraq. Severed heads? Stacks of naked bodies? That's not art, it's news.

My idea of "high culture'' is the top row of seats at Oklahoma! I live on Square Street with Joe and Jane Burbs.

During intermission at the Aronoff recently, I noticed something: The place was packed. Little girls in church hats, men and women in suits and evening gowns rode buses from Nashville for a night in Cincinnati. It made me realize something I often forget: Cincinnati is a cultural stage. We are the city that lights the horizon.

Musicals that are older than the atomic bomb may not be cutting edge, but the ticket prices show they're still financially viable. I think it's because they entertain us without a left-handed political rant as heavy as a four-course Italian dinner.

They succeed by showing us there's more to life than sex, AIDS, race, sex and AIDS.

My odometer is a few miles over the 18-35 crowd the Fringe Fest attracts. So maybe I just don't get it. "There is something for everyone,'' Bruffy said. "Anything here could be the next big thing.''

The next big thing? Paint me skeptical. In five years, most contemporary art will look as dated as a rusty Oldsmobile grille.

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E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.