Thousands descended on London Fields on Halloween night to watch performance artists Jack Carden and Camtholomew the First joust on London’s Lime bikes for the second time.
The pair went five rounds in a spectacle that garnered 5,000 RSVPs, with many attendees sporting medieval costumes and accessories to get into the spirit of the occasion.
Much of the crowd could be spotted filming the event, with posts from spectators garnering tens of thousands of shares across TikTok and Instagram.
Carden said: “The beauty of the idea is its simplicity.
“We were looking at videos of jousting from Warwick Castle and just thought how amusing it would be to do that on a Lime bike.
“It’s actually a perfect piece of performance art. Knights are cool, violence is fun, and Lime bikes are so integrated into London society, it’s all very relatable.”
The event joins a recent string of cultural hits for the rent-a-bike service as popular sketch comedy shows Ellie & Natasha and Saturday Night Live UK have both recently featured the iconic transport in sketches poking fun at their young, obsessive following.
In this instance, Lime took the opportunity to warn users their bikes were “designed for getting around the city, not for jousting”.
“It’s an excellent piece of PR, but it’s not going to stop us,” Carden responded.
“We’ve been in contact with Lime since the beginning. They’re effectively just getting really good marketing out of this, so I suspect they secretly love it. If they really wanted to stop us, we’d just do it on Forest bikes instead.”
The artist’s post announcing the rematch was shared more than 20,000 times on Instagram, raising questions over crowd sizes potentially causing disruption in the London Fields area.
Carden stressed: “Our concern is safety at all times. We’ll ensure to cap the audience to the best of our abilities again. Hopefully it’ll be bigger, but not so dramatically bigger that it causes distress to the community.”
Volunteer stewards and paramedics were in attendance on the day, the latter proving necessary after Carden injured his wrist on contact with his opponent’s breastplate.
The Metropolitan Police were also monitoring the event, giving the go-ahead just a few hours before it was scheduled to take place.
On whether he would don the lance and Lime once more, Carden claimed: “Lime Bike Jousting 2 was the finale and the ultimate crescendo of this moment.
“This is just the first of what I plan to be many, many public interventions, performance art pieces and conceptual works that hopefully push the needle of what it is to be an artist. Keep an eye out for what’s next.”
Following the enormous popularity of the first joust, the artists locked lances this time to raise money for five charities: The Bike Project, Create (Arts), Honour Thy Woman Group, Mental Health Foundation, and War Child.
Image credits: Jack Carden @jackcarden.art
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