“This is a testament to the technology of the new millennium,” says Laura, a public policy analyst. “We can share information in new ways. We can all gather together without anyone being in charge.” It is a crisp Friday night with a waxing moon peeking out from behind icy high clouds.

Laura is a biker. Not a biker chick. She pedals. To work. To the store. To her, a bike is as necessary as a Ford Fiesta to a waitress at Denny’s. She and a gang of other activist bikers are celebrating their rides as well as denigrating the automobile at “Autogeddon: A Critical Response to Car Culture” at Lineage Gallery. The exhibit is inspired by Critical Mass, the informal, regular gathering of bikers in solidarity in many downtown business districts around the country. Critical Mass participants see themselves as cuddly revolutionaries; that’s why many of them don’t give their last names when speaking with reporters. They don’t plant bombs but they tie up rush-hour traffic, so they fear police harassment.

“We’re a Xerocracy,” Laura says. Indeed, below stacks of Critical Mass stickers and floppy disks on sale at the gallery an explanatory paragraph reads in part: “...those that make the most flyers have the most control.”

Travis Culley, playwright, biker and curator of this exhibit, put out the call for art just three weeks ago. He was swamped with submissions, including one oil painting the artist executed and turned in a mere two days after Culley had phoned her. These bikers are a frenetic bunch, leaping into action seemingly before planning words are out of their mouths. “Four months ago, none of these people knew each other,” says Jim Redd, whose work “Strategic Blueways (A Modest Proposal)” calls for a system of bike routes using residential streets and forming a citywide grid. Chicago’s Critical Mass movement took off during a Friday-evening rush our in early September. “Now,” says Redd, “there are hundreds of us.”

The reception is coupled with another monthly Critical Mass ride, starting at Daley Center and ending at the gallery. Even though the temperature has already dipped below 30 degrees, some three dozen hard-core bikers ride. They arrive at Lineage forty five minutes after the reception begins, huffing and grinning, bring a rush of cold air in with them. “On Wabash Avenue the wind almost stopped us in our tracks,” says Culley. “At one point we all started screaming just from the sheer joy of it.”

They mingle with other Critical Mass supporters (there is no such thing as a member) as well as the usual art crowd, while Jelleyeye’s Eric Anderson and independent drummer Palacio Gabler, dressed like a cross between Kiss’ Gene Simmons and a Zulu warrior, bang and pound on Anderson’s “Gridlock” and “Brake Drums,” separate installations featuring discarded auto parts and street detritus suspended by ropes and tubing. The sounds range from that of tongue drums to Chinese gongs to that of three-year-olds beating Mom’s saucepan lids together.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of Critical Mass,” says artist Orit Zerouni, whose “Air Fresheners” consists of a series of six glass tubes filled with foul-looking liquids labeled sulfur dioxide, lead, carbon monoxide and so on. Each of the labels lists the effects on the human body of the specific substance. Zerouni, a Greenpeace volunteer, is a convert. “Now I want to join in,” she says.

Travis Culley’s piece, “The Polutician,” greets browsers and passing pedestrians. It is an eight-foot tall man figure made of discarded auto parts, traffic cones and license plates. It features a prominent erection made of a rust-pitted tailpipe. Artist Judith Katz congratulates Culley on his piece. “This is the best,” she says. “I just love its dick. It’s so audacious.” Katz signs her work #659, her bike messenger number. She works in pastel oils , found objects and clipped photographs. She is one of many bike messengers here. The infamous Spider, known as much for openly flouting  ordinances requiring bike messengers to wear helmets and safety vests as for his arachnid tattoos, holds court on frigid Franklin Street, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Biking has made him hard. He’s dodged cars, car doors, ice and oil slicks, and has felt the needles of March sleet on his face. And as if bikers and messengers in particular don’t have enough to contend with, Spider reminds his pals of the time bikers at a certain messenger service tried to unionize. The owner’s son, Spider says, attempted to discourage such talk by braining one of the organizers with a wrench.

Later, another woman compliments Culley on his piece. They chat on Franklin Street before dozens of bikes U-locked to a three-inch thick rope, seeking relief for a moment from the drummer’s din. “I think you should have propaganda in the window,” the woman suggests.

“You mean the big phallus isn’t enough?” Culley replies.

“Naw,” she says. “Maybe something like “Cars are evil.”