Project 52

London is a network of routes – some visible like the roads and cycle and bus lanes, others beneath the surface; all carrying passengers to destinations. It’s estimated that the London Underground transports more than two million people a day.

Imagine if every single person traversing the capital left a trail of light – something like the trail of a sparkler or the lines of headlights in a photograph taken at a slow shutter speed. The city above and below ground would be alight. Condrad Shawcross’s new installation in the depths of the Kingsway tram system at Holborn makes physical this line of journeying

Chord is made up of two giant looms that are connected by 162 spools of rainbow coloured thread. As the spools rotate and the machines move away from each other on a 100 metre track, a giant piece of suspended rope is woven. It takes four weeks to complete the short journey; the movement propelling the sculpture is barely perceptible.

There is something very human about Chord – like two figures bidding farewell. The coloured rope intimates those invisible trails that we weave as we journey. The gentleness of Shawcross’s mechanical creatures and their shared umbilical chord seems to be generative if not purposefull. However, at the end of each of the four weeks cycles that span the show, the rope, I’ve been told, has been cut up and sold.

Chord is also a response to the cavernous space and functionality of the now defunct tramway, which closed in 1952. It recreates the mechanical to-ing and fro-ing of the bygone double-decker trams, only at a fraction of the speed. Surely it has its roots in the age of industry age, yet it also has an organic quality with its flower-like nexus of spools and twining threads, hinting at the invisible patterns and formulae that govern both the natural and manmade world.

The space itself is something of an exhibit with an intriguing mix of past and present. Street paraphernalia – belonging to Camden Council – is stored in the old underground tunnels. Truncated lampposts and discarded spiked spheres that decorate Holborn streets at Christmas – rather like a miniature B of the Bang, Thomas Heatherwick ill-fated piece of public art – lurk in the shadows. Old tube maps from the fifties – without the Victoria and Circle lines – peel off dusty walls and the intricate threaded shadows cast by Chord bring to mind Ariadne and her reckless tapestry; all add to the sense of melancholy and ghostliness.

Watching Shawcross’s gentle giant, silently going about its motorised business, is very soothing. The spools slowly turn and the looms move away from each other imperceptibly, yet despite the near invisibility of movement something is being created. It’s hypnotic and I found myself adapting to Chord’s time, standing watching without really be able to see progress but nonetheless feeling a sense of satisfaction.

I resurfaced into the evening rush hour of Holborn and drifted into the crowds heading purposefully home.

I have a secret. Beneath our feet Chord is slowly doing its thing into the night, and there is something in its unassuming industriousness that prevents me from moving with the same urgency as those around me. Chord has succeeded in removing me – at least for a time – from the pace of the city. It feels good.