STROKE CITY RACING

Stroke City Racing (2013) is an exciting workshop led public arts project for the city of Derry-Londonderry and is part of the UK City of Culture 2013 program. It is a two phased project to reveal a Formula 1 racing circuit through the streets of the City of Derry, imaginatively manifesting a socially sited permanent monument which is at once visible and invisible, physical and ephemeral.

There is a certain kind of monumentality to a race track. They are epics of speed, of space and of scale. They are immense spectacles of concrete and asphalt where legends are born. To enter such an arena is to be given the chance of becoming part of the mythology of the race track itself. To map out such a circuit on the streets of the City of Derry is to provide the opportunity for the spectator to step down from the grandstand and walk on the racing surface itself.

The project will be developed initially through research workshops during the first phase. It will be during these events that the mapping of a suitable potential circuit will be discussed and elaborated through presentations, walking tours and cartography sessions. These will be attended by artists, engineers and urban designers, as well as motor racing fans, games geeks and other interested parties.

The second phase will take the final route from the research phase and develop this for delivery and distribution to the public. This will take the form of a publication and map which will exist as a formal document officially prescribing the street circuit, a record with the potential to be fully certified.

The overall aim of the project is to address and challenge the conception of a public art work. While the project will be essentially realised through ephemeral and virtual means, there will exist a ‘real’ albeit ‘invisible’ racetrack in the city streets permanently exposed to an everyday public. While the project will rely on newly made legacy and myth within the social fabric for its future, the race track itself will become part of the physical fabric and mythology the City of Derry.