Lampadedromia (San Juan Torch Relay)

In the Spring of 2004, Slovenian artist and curator Tadej Pogačar invited United States artists Deidre Hoguet and Peter Walsh to join him in creating a new olympic torch relay to carry the flame for Equipo Terrestre (Team Earth), "The Supra-National Team," across the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Called Lampadedromia, Puerto Rico 2004 after the greek word for torch relay, the art project was commissioned in celebration of PR_04: Tribute to the Messenger, an arts festival sponsored by the Puerto Rican arts group M&M Proyectos. The flame itself was carried on two separate occasions.

On the evening of Friday, May 28, 2004, San Juan residents joined with artists from around the world to celebrate the opening of the festival in an elaborate torch relay through the cobble-stone streets of Viejo San Juan, the historic 400 year-old center of Puerto Rico’s capital city.

The following week the entire festival moved to the town of Rincón on the west coast of Puerto Rico. There, the Lampadedromia project was expanded to become a torch procession that marked the public opening of the festival’s Villa Olimpica. On Friday night, June 4th, an energetic group of townspeople from Rincón, carrying the olympic torch, led a gathering of the artists and curators from their town square at Iglesia de Santa Rosa de Lima, down Calle Muñoz Rivera to Route 115 and on into the artists’ compound (photo gallery).

See www.peterwalshprojects.us/LampadedromiaPages/Lampadedromi... for details.