Walking piece details
| Language | English, Greek |
| Cost | Free |
| "Wheels Off" video |
Group performance for Walking Arts conference, Prespes, Greece. Watch the two minute video for details.
At a geographic and geologic boundary, hikers symbolically disable their vehicles. The rubber wheels are then used to first draw, then erase, a mountain snowcap or glacier. Melting “waters” tumble joyously downhill.
Description of the performance:
Participants arrive at the remote site in automobiles. Lead artists jack up their car, remove the wheels, and offer tires to take for a walk.
Rolling to road’s end, we hit the border with North Macedonia. Here, the tires turn. Locked gate, no passage.
A bolt of white fabric unrolls to mark the geographic limit. Here, Greeks and Slavs, Christians and Muslims were forcibly divided.
We tear the fabric into bandage-like strips. One strip skims across the standing tires to draw a line of snow-capped hills. Others knot together into escape ropes. All tie rocks into one end like potential weapons.
Participants divide into ridge and base teams. Ridge team carries prepared ropes to the top of a steep slope where the road cuts into the mountain. Base team drives wheels to the bottom of this slope.
Ridge team tosses loaded rope ends down cliff face: snow cover extends, glaciers advance. Base team attaches tires to ropes.
Ridge team hoists tires up rock face. This is a comically laborious process where tires snag and lurch among obstacles. A glacier recedes in a shower of loose rock.
For the finale, ridge team launches the tires together back down the slope. With ribbon-like ropes still attached, they bounce and arc in spectacular style. Snow and people flee for the sea.
At level terrain, the wheels slow and fall, trailing lines across the road. These could be agricultural canals in the valley below, or the tracks of fleeing refugees.
Credits
Lisa Hein, concept
Lisa Hein and Robert Seng, choreography
Lydia Matthews, language, travel and personnel advisor; base team camera
Kyriakos Iliadis, automotive consultant
Katsiavos junkyards, Lamia, Greece: generous donors of car parts
Hosted by: WAC
