Located in the heart of Glasgow’s city centre, NVA (a Glasgow-based arts organisation 1992 – 2018) created the temporary White Bike Plan installation in 2010 for that year’s Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.
Fifty specially built white bikes were ridden en masse from Kelvingrove Park to George Square for riders to pick up and start riding to different venues that were part of the festival. In doing so, participants became performers and therefore part of the work. This then meant that White Bike Plan was then dispersed all across the city.
The only catch for using these free bikes was that while you left it outside a venue to view a different part of the festival, you had to accept that someone may take your bike and ride it elsewhere. The bikes were donated to bike charities after the festival.
Re-enacting an original anarchist political action by the Provo movement in Amsterdam in 1965 led by Luud Schimmelpennink, this protest piece was against congestion, the car and social control.
White Bikes explores similar themes to those seen in Slow Down (2014) by Jacqueline Donachie.
Credit: Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.