Timeline
- Application/Design due date: March 2022, date TBA
- Jurors’ announcement: Within a week of the design deadline
- Racing Sculptures due date is Raceday: Saturday, June 4, 2022
The Event
This is an approximately ¾-mile juried race of pushed, pulled, or pedaled* sculpture with a following daylong exhibition at the Cambridge Arts River Festival. The festival is an annual celebration with 150,000–200,000 festival-goers. Participants have the opportunity to join in a spectacular, well-attended event, and exhibit their work publicly on Race Day and on the PSR site, and become part of the sculpture racing community.
*Pedaled works have an additional design constraint on gear ratios.
How to Enter
Email proposals, title, images of proposed and past work, short bio, contact info by March date TBA to sculptureracing@gmail.com. Jurying takes place early the following week, and is based spectacle, quality, originality, fidelity to guidelines, practicality, & entrants’ demonstrated capacity to complete the project. Notifications within a week. Jurors TBA
Works need not be completed until RACEDAY.
Basic Guidelines (see here for all guidelines)
- The overarching aesthetic is spectacle (visually striking performance or display) and capturing the imagination.
- All works must be human-powered, i.e. pushed, pulled, or pedaled
- Rolling parts (such as wheels) or other devices (such as metal feet) making motive contact with the ground must be integral to the artistic work.
- This is a ‘total art’ event: projects are encouraged to include performance, sound art, costumes, kinetic objects
Additional Guidelines
Trophies
Handmade trophies by PSR will be awarded in the following categories:
- Speed – who finishes the race first.
- Spectacle – visually striking performance or display; creativity, craftmanship, uniqueness, artistic merit, daring, wildness, significance
- Ingenuity – engineering innovation
2018 trophies by Rory Beerits
Other Races
An unjuried Community Race and exhibition will take place at Danehy Park, in northwest Cambridge, in April 2022. This is a Cambridge Science Festival event. See sculptureracing/Danehy for more info & workshops.