Witte Fietsenplan

White Bike Plan for G.I. Art Festival

May 22, 2009

“The White Bicycle Plan proposes to create bicycles for public use that cannot be locked. The white bicycle symbolizes simplicity and healthy living, as opposed to the gaudiness and filth of the authoritarian automobile.” Provo manifesto

NVA are developing the Witte Fietsenplan for Glasgow International 2010, a re-enactment of the infamous White Bike Plan, a Dutch anarchist action from the mid 1960’s.

Referencing and reinvigorating a key legacy from the political, philosophical and ecological directives of the Dutch Provo movement, NVA will create a number of white bikes, which will be freely available across the city, to move between venues for the duration of the G.I. programme. Following the festival the bikes will be donated for further public use.

The Provos are thought to have evolved out of the maverick artist / shaman- Robert Jasper Grootveld’s anti-smoking happenings in June 1964. The following year other groups appeared as a fusion of small groups of youths around the pacifist Ban-the-bomb movement. The Provos borrowed their name from a 1965 doctoral dissertation, which talked about “young trouble-makers” as ‘provos’.

NVA’s re-enactment will celebrate and document the profound impact of the original concept on the development of sustainable transport policies for overburdened city centres and the power of the artist to drive change and provoke the mainstream to question their apathy in the face of institutional inertia.

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