Five Mile Line 2006

Temporary, Performance/Site Responsive public work, Silver Bow Arts Foundation, Butte, Montana.
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, and Peter Winant

Workingman Collective used E-bay as a source of community inventory and to generate contact with members of the community. This piece was inspired by a 1914 map, found on E-bay, of mine tunnels and fault lines below the city indicated by red and blue lines. The work focused on the activity of snapping continuous red and blue chalk lines on five miles of main street sidewalks. A primary construction tool, the chalk line represents commitment, delineates territory and marks what’s cut and what’s kept. Documentation in over 1,600 photographs and in video recordings shows the relationship of the line, as an object and gesture, to the existing structures and to the commerce of business and people in Butte’s fragile old city center.