La danse de la lumière, Berlin 2016 © Lorraine Thomas
There is the drawn diagram, and the plan that I associate with architecture — the one that is easy to read for builders, almost ready‑made, the one construction workers rely on. The plan is a representation of the diagram; it freezes it. But you don’t freeze light, nor waves, nor a child’s jump on the chalk‑drawn pavement.
Hopscotch can be set up almost anywhere and very quickly; a few children and a piece of chalk are enough to initiate the game and transform the street — a radical potential that goes far beyond the idea of a children’s game. Hopscotch is not a cross‑shaped plan but the use of that plan, between sky and earth. In my drawings and collages, I explore through experience the temporary occupation of public space imagined through this simple diagram.
Hopscotch is the abstract drawing of a game. It exists independently of the place in which it sits. It can happen anywhere, and it takes only a few kids and a chalk to make it happen and to transform a street. What interests me here is the formal challenge — not reducing Hopscotch to a mere tracing, but including the children’s jumps, the pavement, the street, the town, “Sky and Earth,” and the fun.
Is it the hopscotch or playing hopscotch? Can one imagine one without the other.
