Richard Kraft

Business Cards

100 Walkers is an ongoing series of works that manifest as both actions and gallery installations. Actions have so far been performed in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Wendover, Utah and Charlottesville, Virginia. In all the actions, walkers wearing unique sandwich boards move through the city or landscape, creating startling incongruities with their surrounding environment. These actions have involved anywhere from one to twenty-five performers.

The City of West Hollywood has recently commissioned a version of the piece in which one hundred performers will participate. One Hundred Walkers, West Hollywood will begin with all one hundred walkers assembled in a grid. Slowly dispersing, they will individually walk pre-determined routes through the city, returning finally, to their starting point to end the piece.

The sandwich boards draw on various lexica, both visual and verbal, that include aphorisms, painted hand gestures, imagery from children's books, animals, photographs of the elemental, war and resistance, dissidents and activists. Subverting a form traditionally associated with advertising (whether for a product or an idealogy), the sandwich boards here have nothing to sell. Instead they invite multiple associations and connections.

Collectively, the walkers form an unusual army of incongruities and juxtapositions which inject humor, commentary, distortion, as well as glimpses of parallel moments in space and time. Individually, each walker will capture the attention of most passersby (particularly those who are driving) for just a blink, enough to interrupt daily life and shift the viewer's awareness of their world.

During each action the performers remain silent. Interaction with inquisitive passers by is confined to the handing out of a business card.