RopeWalk, Purple People Bridge
Performance, 50+ participants, recycled flag material, public bridge spanning Ohio/Kentucky
Alex and Farron, RopeWalk, This Time Tomorrow Performance Festival, Contemporary Arts Center, April 14, 2019; Photo credit: Ravena Rutledge
RopeWalk Purple People Bridge is a large-scale, public performance on one of the historic bridges spanning the Ohio River. In conjunction with the CAC’s This Time Tomorrow 2019 Performance Festival, fifty participants across various Cincinnati communities came together to create ropes spanning the bridge as both a symbolic, and real, action of public healing. The site is connected to the charged histories of slavery and freedom. The bridge spans the Ohio River which still today signifies the dividing line between the North and South of Civil War America. A gathering with light refreshments followed the RopeWalk (on the Cincinnati-side of the bridge).
Conceived as an open-ended and ongoing engagement tool, RopeWalks, can be performed in various contexts. Each rope consists of three bobbins (made from recycled flag scraps from a local flag company), 5+/- participants (a “beater”, a “head”, and three weavers) and approximately 20-30 minutes of collective labor. Each rope gets a small paper tag with the names of the team and the date of the RopeWalk.
RopeWalks are named after the 19th and 20th century industrial buildings whose form mirrored their function. Before industrialization rope making required collective physical labor and architectures accommodated the actual length of the product. Research into my ancestors’ immigrant histories lead me to the Plymouth Cordage Co. Italian-American anarchist, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, is said to have worked there and organized a labor strike for better wages and hours. RopeWalk, as a larger project, is designed to engage with the range of hxstories of American labor, immigration, and identity as a way to publicly address and counter racist and anti-immigrant narratives.
Participants:
Mahnaz Amin Foroughi, Karri Durham, Kiara Galloway, Kate Gibson, Michaela Haawé, Alex Macon, Alex Phillips, Ellis Johnson, Becca Moskowitz, Elan Schwartz, Aubrey Theobald, Tracey Featherstone, Anissa Lewis, Welly Fletcher, Lacey Haslam, Tanja Nusser, Svea Braeunert, Stevie Beck, Stephen Slaughter, Sso-Rha Kang, Nandita Sheth, Mary Clare Rietz, M’Shinda Abdullah-Broaddus, Lydia Rosenberg, Colleen Houston, Alexa Hamilton, Matt Distel, Farron Allen, Edward Victor Sanchez, Breanne Trammell, and many more folks that joined us the day of the event!