Performing sustainable transport: an artistic RIDE across the city

Critically reflecting upon a performance piece enacted by the author, this paper explores the value of artistic practice as a means for undertaking research. The performance was a piece of GPS drawing, using the movement of a body in space to write the word ‘RIDE’ across the city, subsequently represented in the form of a map. Scholars working in mobilities have increasingly been opening up the spaces of transport to critical enquiry, revealing the practices and powers enmeshed in the everyday activity of moving from A-to-B. This paper argues that in using a bicycle ride to create an art work – even one of little aesthetic merit – the author was able to create a new understanding of cycling practices that would not be captured through conventional social science techniques.