Boogie Down Rides

John Ahearn + Rigoberto Torres, block party 

Block Party at Walton Avenue; Photo by Ivan Dalla Tana; courtesy of John Ahearn

Ride your bike!

“Bicycling is art” is an open source mode of art practice, production, and an invitation offered by Bronx-based artists Meta Local Collaborative as part of their ongoing project, Boogie Down Rides.

A bike ride is  transformation, transportation, and transgression.

The bicycle is conditioned and powered by human energy. It goes as far and as fast as your energy allows. To ride a bike gives sense of control and independence that is empowering thus transformative. Riding a bicycle changes dramatically your sense of space, distance and time.  Experience your surroundings. Become present there and then. It is a different way to go, to be. To become a verb, action.

It produces routes, paths, links.

Trajectories. Embodied lines. Streets are a unit of measurement (we know the distance from here to there in blocks, turns and landmarks).

Bicycling makes places legible. It is a way of seeing.

Patterns in time. Realization (making real). Scale and distance relative to the body. Faster than walking but powered by the body. What is the right speed to see/know a place?

Our bicycles amplify our power, but bicycling makes us vulnerable.

We ride with confidence, propelled by our own force. Unexpected things can happen. Vulnerability is part of the experience.

It is risky, and requires trust.

First there are the differences of size and weight. Speed. Then there is the fact that we are outnumbered. To travel, to leave, to go somewhere else. Unfamiliar territory. Endurance. Fatigue.

Bicycling together creates a temporary mobile community. It is a spectacle.

We become a unified “school” of cyclists. We are present and visible. Our numbers provide safety. Being together. Being public. No one is left behind. We are together in public. We care for each other.

Streets are public space and bicycling together articulates their shared role.

Streets are planned, but their use can be emergent.

Bicycling is for everyone.

A bicycle is a simple machine. It is inexpensive and accessible. A bicycle is a tool that embodies democracy in its most basic form.

This code of eight statements proposes a way to be outside, on the periphery, ephemeral, invisible but in the public eye, to be in flux constantly and always moving. Bicycling is art.

Ride your bike!