Chrysalis Bridge
Installation and Cocoon Performance with Easy Credit Theater
Buffalo Bayou Art Park: Houston, TX 1999
Chrysalis Bridge attached to the underside of Sabine Street Bridge along Allen Parkway, a linear park parallel to Buffalo Bayou near downtown Houston. The 33-feet long chrysalis was parasited using custom c-clamps and half-inch threaded rod that hung from two concrete cantilever beams supporting the bridge. Chrysalis Bridge was designed to respond to hikers and bikers who passed below on a path that runs along the bayou. The bamboo and galvanized gate clamp structure was wrapped in copper screen, and fiberglass “organs” were placed within the cocoon to protect the mechanized components from adverse weather.
The “organs” included a fiberglass-coated brain of bamboo, metal screen, and steel angle; a nervous system in the form of a light spine; cannibalized windshield wipers driving probe-like bamboo arms; and a radiator fan as an excretory/cooling system. These “organs” were synchronized to a bank of motion sensors that triggered reactions from passersby. By day or night, the chrysalis was a mute, inanimate object that awakened and activated an outdoor space through its motion sensor fields whenever human contact was made.
Self-proclaimed post-nuclear dance troupe Easy Credit Theater scripted and choreographed a three hour Butoh-esque performance and soundscape that used the chrysalis as its concept and focus for an opening event. The result was an interaction between eight primitive, plastic-wrapped, human cocoons and tribal drumming. The chrysalis stirred as the cocoons approached and encouraged transformation as the motion increased. As time progressed, the performers interacted with the chrysalis, and following their birthing, or fully emerging from their cocoons, a near-orgiastic evolutionary technologically frenzied dance developed. The dancers’ movements extended into the crowd and increased in physical control and difficulty, much like an emerging butterfly adapts to its new body. The ensemble acted as a chrysalis becoming aware, reacting to its environment, and fulfilling the life cycle. Here, performance attempted to show the possibilities of interacting with such responsive objects and spaces and to urge a greater awareness of the spaces that create one’s environment.
As Bruce Webb noted in his review of Chrysalis Bridge, “The anomalous presence of the chrysalis on-location demonstrates the way that parasitic grafting can serve to activate and reinterpret underachieving urban situations by teasing the implacable urban infrastructure into playfulness.”
