Chance Shadows - a collaboration with Tapati Chowdhury
Paint on parking lot of the Kulturspinderiet, Varde, Denmark
Taking place within the context of the Wadden Tide Festival 2016 and organized by curator, Anne Mette Laursen, and representatives from the city planning department of Varde and the Kulturspinderiet, an old steal factory turned cultural center, Tapati Chowdhury and I were invited to create a public mural in a parking lot of Kulturspinderiet. The good news was that we had sunny weather, lots of space, and six wonderful volunteers to help; the challenge was that we had 5.5 hours to do it! Tapati and I decided that the composition had to come from within the creation of the painting itself, so we looked to the strategies of randomness and chance developed first by the Dadaists and, later, John Cage and Fluxus.
We began by writing the numbers 1-6 evenly spaced around the edges of the parking lot. We distributed dice and rolls of tape with various widths amongst the volunteers. I then stood in the center, with the volunteers surrounding me, their backs turned towards me, facing outwards. They were then invited to roll a number, place one end of the tape on the ground and begin walking toward whichever number they had rolled, extending the tape along the ground as they walked. It was up to them to decide when to stop walking, to roll again, and set off with their line of tape in a new direction. Once all of the tape was used, we rolled white paint over the entire taped area, staying within the outer boundary of the taped lines.
Once the white paint was dry, we removed all the tape, revealing the black lines in the asphalt below. Tapati and I invited all of the volunteers to stand on the white shape and strike a pose; we then traced their shadows with chalk. The volunteers each chose the color of her shadow, and Tapati and I painted in their silhouettes. They also invited a skater from the neighboring skate park and the Kulturspinderiet's janitor, as "he never gets to do anything fun" to also strike poses and have their shadows painted. A young man on a skooter asked to have his shadow recorded as well.
We finished right at the 5.5 hour mark, and the neighboring skaters immediately began riding over the painting, using the figures as markers to skate around and the lines to guide their trajectories. We were all very happy to see them enjoying Chance Shadows so much!
Volunteers laying down lines of tape, heading toward a certain rolled number
Volunteers striking poses over the white shape
The white shape after rolling white paint and removing the tape
Painted shadows