Marisa Morán Jahn and Rafi Segal
Commissioned by the National Public Housing Museum, 2024
Funding: The Joyce Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Chicago Association of Realtors, and The New School Faculty Development Fund.
Image above: photo by David McMillan. Image courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
HOOPcycle is a mobile basketball court on a tricycle that can easily set up and activate different public spaces. HOOPcycle features one rim that resembles the look and feel of contemporary basketball and two oriented rims that remix the vertical orientation of its pre-Columbian precursor found throughout MesoAmerica since as early as 2500 BCE. By simply tilting the HOOPcycle’s rims 90 degrees onto its side, the artwork transforms how players score points, slam dunk, alley oop, and the design of the court altogether. HOOPcycle’s colorful appearance and adjustable-height rims engages a broader group of people who might not otherwise step into a basketball court. So too, with no predetermined ways to win, players are invited to re-imagine the rules of the game, rendering the game more accessible. HOOPcycle will debut at The National Public History Museum’s grand opening on Fall 2024.
HOOPcycle in “play mode.” Photo by David McMillan. Image courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
HOOPcycle in “ride mode”. Photo by David McMillan. Image courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
HOOPcycle’s design reinterprets the Meso-American tradition of papel picado (“perforated paper”) in which the holes are said to let the past come through. In other words, the punctured surfaces, or mesh, invokes interfaces between space and time. Aside from the structural purposes of the mesh (to let wind pass through and reduce weight), its ornamentation — much like individualist self-fashioning contemporary sports today — celebrates the game as an important form of cultural expression.
Left: details on backboard and rim. Photo by David McMillan. Above: pattern study to create “Roundies” pattern used in HOOPcycle’s rim and backboards. 8”x10” collage. Images courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
The process of creating HOOPcycle arose from Jahn’s role as NPHM’s 2022 Artist Instigator in which she created a series of artworks reflecting on the re-creation. Jahn reflects, “What I remember most vividly from my experiences living and working in public housing is children playing all around me. These memories of joy and laughter counter the image that many Americans have had in their mind—and this is a result of the government’s disinvestment in public housing starting in the 1960s. But while this artwork arose from my interest in dignifying and humanizing public housing residents through play, HOOPcycle more broadly invites us to reconsider the idea of ‘re/creation’ — how we see ourselves and our relations with others through play.”
During several codesign workshops involved residents, neighbors, and local businesses to playtest HOOPcycle, Jahn and Segal were delighted to discover that its playful appearance seems more accessible to the older adults such as Ms. Beverly, a 85-year old public housing resident who scored points while fondly recalling her years as a cheerleader. Other older adults and youth also felt more at ease playing ball in the less competitive context that HOOPcycle created.
For Segal, a lifelong basketball aficionado, MIT Professor, and architect whose work involves designing spaces of collectivity and civic gathering. For Segal, whose work involves designing spaces of collectivity and civic gathering, HOOPcycle “transforms urban zones into spaces of play and asks us to reimagine our everyday environment.”
The ball court at Chichen Itza, Yucatán, Mexico. Players gained points not by bouncing the ball but by using their knees, hips, and elbows to knock a hard rubber ball weighing 13 pounds into the vertical rim.
The game was referred to as Pok-A-Tok, Ulama, or simply the Ball Game.
The first women’s basket ball teams emerged within 2 years after basketball was reinvented in the United States in 1891. In Chicago, women at the Jane Addams Hull House were encouraged to participate in recreational sports and formed one of the nation’s first competitive teams, sharing facilities alongside 3 Hull-House men’s teams. Sewn from leather with uneven seams, the balls were not bounced but instead were passed into a hoop.
Pattern studies to create jailstar and foxtail patterns used in the rims for the first prototype of “HOOPS,” 2023. Images courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
Credits
Created by Marisa Morán Jahn and Rafi Segal, 2024.
Fabrication of HOOPcycle by Big Deal Cases (Arnie Hen, Jeff Hildebran) with Project Manager Art Domantay.
Renders and Design: Ous Abou Rabas.
Studio Assistants: Em Flaire, Zevin Auña
Prototype by Stronghold NY