At 2 o clock on Easter Sunday, around 50 people gathered at a derelict car park outside of the “ThinkTank” science museum in the bitter cold and the drizzling rain to commence on what I thought was going to be a unique journey throughout the town center. When looking at the picture in the Fierce Festival program it appeared as if we would be walking in geometrical lines in order to creates shapes that would emerge when looked at from above however that was not the case.
Hamish Fulton (the artist) directed his volunteers to find a line on the surface of the car park of any length – a meter or even fifty. When the gong was rung (an unusual piece of apparatus to be brought along to a car park I must say) we were to walk along our line but only reach the end when two hours was up. I can not speak for everybody who participated but my mother (who also joined in with this experience) and I found this to be an immense time to be standing stationary in the freezing weather and only moving every 15 minutes in order to complete the challenge. In order to pass the time many people brought books along with them and others including myself began “jigging” on the spot in order to keep warm (despite this making me seem rather bizarre it was worth the embarrassment as it stopped my feet being frozen to my faded line)
Whilst trying to refrain from turning into an icicle I thought about the possibilities of what this odd piece of art work was because although the question was raised it was not answered. As we were not allowed to speak throughout the duration (which I forgot to mention) I was able to come up with these theories. The first being about finding our own lines or “paths” in our lives as Fulton did not designate them but we chose them for ourselves, and it is up to us to choose the pace in which we progress along our paths. Secondly we all had to start from one point of the line and arrive at the end which could be an interpretation of life and death- some people will have a short distance between life and death, others longer. And finally the lines we chose were allowed to cross, touch and meet which may represent the idea that at some point whilst traveling along our own personal lines we will eventually bump into someone that could change our lives dramatically even if the meeting was only for a brief moment.
Unfortunately I could not stay for the entirety of the piece as I was defeated by the polar temperatures so I was unable to find out the true meaning of this artwork. However I must say that I was quite disappointed with the actual involvement I had in the art, as I felt without proper explanation it was quite boring as all we did was travel at a snails pace along a line which can not exactly be called a “walk.” Despite this I still came away with several concepts on life which these faded lines printed on the derelict car park symbolized to me.