Phantasmagoria of Progress

With the installation “Phantasmagoria of Progress” InLight visitors are invited to take a seat on a bicycle and pedal a light across the Great Shiplock Park canal. Their energy is transferred up a metal tower via a pulley system much like those that might have pulled boats along the canal and powered early industrial factories. The pedaling of the cyclist also powers the light as it moves back and forth in a loop.

This project draws from folklore about ghost trains, early phantasmagoria light shows and Richmond’s history of electric rail to create an interactive light installation driven by the pedal power of participants. Like an oncoming headlight, the light traveling across the canal alternately illuminates the surroundings and blinds visitors to its multilayered history. In this way, the light works like a warning challenging visitors to consider their own role in witnessing often overlooked histories.

The initial trigger for the project comes from the artist’s own research on the electric rail line that once connected his hometown of Ashland, Virginia to downtown Richmond. The resulting article “Ghost trains: past and future mobilities haunting a Southern Town” is also about the uncanny experience of witnessing signs of historical tragedies while on the move going about daily routines. These electric trolleys are now ghost trains but even in their absence they still have the power to remind us of the stakes of future development. Any nostalgia for these early forms of electric public transportation must also be confronted with the harsh truth that they effectively helped to divide urban and suburban neighborhoods along racial lines and were themselves segregated.

This new installation brings a pedal-powered phantasmagoria to a site that once housed industrial shipbuilding, westward trade routes and brought goods and enslaved peoples into Richmond. The impacts of this history still haunt this site and Richmond.

Click here to download project description.