Watch a Human-Powered Fleet of ‘Fireflies’ Create a Nighttime Dreamscape

By BARBARA POLLACKSEPT. 15, 2017

PHILADELPHIA — Not every street in America deserves a birthday party, but this city chose to honor its 100-year-old Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Thursday with a mesmerizing centennial celebration.

Hundreds gathered at sunset to catch a public art performance by the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang that filled the grand boulevard, originally modeled after the Champs-Élysées in Paris, with a fleet of rickshaw-style pedicabs festooned with 1,000 handmade paper lanterns. They appeared as flying fireflies, as the bicyclists bobbed and wove in choreographed patterns.

Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Fireflies,” with Chinese lanterns designed by the artist and pedicab performance in Philadelphia. CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

The event, titled “Fireflies,” lasted only 20 minutes but generated a feel-good response. At its conclusion, the crowd flooded the street to congratulate the drivers and take selfies with the funky decorated vehicles.

“Even if you weren’t expecting to enjoy it, it was just so charming and it made you laugh,” said Lauren Raske, 31, an event planner who came out to view the event. She said she particularly enjoyed the quirkiness of the Chinese lanterns, which included traditional stars and spheres as well as aliens and U.F.O.s, movie cameras and high-heeled shoes, pandas and roosters, even a Yellow Submarine.

Kenneth Fulton, right, of Philadelphia, one of the pedicab riders, hanging out after the performance.CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

“It’s a nighttime activity and the mystique of the evening makes it a little romantic,” said Nicole Dugan, a physical therapist who brought her daughter and a group of friends with her. “Even on this small scale, it was really spectacular.”

Mr. Cai, who has lived and worked in the United States since the 1990s, is internationally renowned for his highly creative fireworks displays. His pyrotechnic artworks included a series of 29 giant “footprints” in the sky for the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. In 2009, he was commissioned locally, by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to create “Fallen Blossoms,” a 60-second series of controlled explosions on the museum’s terrace. (The blossom pattern, signifying the passing of time, was a tribute to the museum’s late director, Anne D’Harnoncourt.)

Sam Leigh of Philadelphia riding one of the pedicabs. CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

Mr. Cai works in a variety of mediums, including video and drawings made by lighting gunpowder, balancing the damaging force of the material with its aesthetic possibilities. This week, a solo exhibition of his work opened at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, and he will shortly begin a residency at the Prado Museum in Madrid culminating with an exhibition opening in late October..

For “Fireflies,” he returned to his childhood home of Quanzhou to recreate the traditional lanterns as he remembered them.

“In a way, these lanterns are the fireworks of my childhood that can never be put out,” he said, speaking with the assistance of his project manager, Béatrice Grenier, who served as translator. “When I was kid in my hometown, there were a lot of lanterns I could play with and these became extensions of my dreams.”

Though the Parkway performance was only one night, the project will continue through Oct. 8 with lighted pedicabs ferrying visitors between two city parks, Sister Cities Park and Iroquois Park, on Thursday through Sunday evenings. Participants can show up and take a chance on getting a ride, but all the advance time slots have been reserved.

Confetti covered the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

One of the pedicab drivers was Sadigaa Horton, 45, wearing a head scarf and long sleeves, who invited all the families from the day care center she operates.

“This is not just from Cai’s childhood but from everyone’s childhood,” she said, beaming after her performance. None of the drivers were professional athletes and at times their movements were slightly less than synchronized, which only added to the whimsy of the event.

After the performance, Liberty Grace Bukowski of Philadelphia played in the confetti with light up shoes.CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

Penny Balkin Bach, executive director of the city’s Association for Public Art, said the group commissioned the work in collaboration with the independent curator Lance Fung, who brought Mr. Cai to its attention in 2014. Given the current political climate, she said, she felt it was fitting to have an artist who was an immigrant to the United States create a work for the city where the Constitution was signed and American democracy was founded.

“Especially these days, people need opportunities to come together for joyous reasons,” she said.