Sunday, May 27, 2007



Saturday walking…

Jesse, a student at MacEwan College, took the bus to Latitude 53 today showing up at precisely 10 am expecting to join a group walking tour. Since the publicity for the festival states, “Sara Wookey performs Walking Edmonton from 10-4 Saturday”, I can imagine all sorts of assumptions as to what the “performance” actually is. I invited him to choose one of the two invitations on the table. He went for the drift and set out. Another perfect day for walking here, sunny and 22 degrees.

There is something whimsical in thinking that you are coming for a group walk and are then, upon arrival, asked to select an invitation to walk alone, either directed or undirected. Already this action asks for one to make an instinctual choice (since the invitations are sealed before opening). Hopefully, this instinctual tuning in carries over into the walks themselves – how one negotiates the spaces and places of the city.

To walk and not know where one will end up and for no apparent reason is also a commitment and risk. What happens to expectation? Can the walker give over to the unexpected? How is one’s physical experience in the city altered, or not by this walking performance?

What kind of trace of this performed walk is left as a document, product, or memory?

At around 11.25 Jesse returned and we sat in the front lobby and chatted. Like yesterday, I was witness to the participant’s walk via the anecdotes, recollections, and descriptions they willingly shared. I experienced the city, again, through their walk through it.

For me, this project is an inversion of the traditional performer-audience relationship. As Jesse stated, he was “given permission to take time out just to walk”. I, on the other hand, ask that the walker return and offer something back in the form of markings, tracings, or telling. I am trying to be a good listener, not interrupting or asking too many questions. Trying to feel out where these post-walking moment leads to.

This work is so much about the live, spontaneous, social interactions after the walk has occurred. I am convinced that , as hostess, a social space needs to be created for those returning from the walk. A place for eating , drinking, relaxing and letting the events from the walk have a place to unwrap and unwind in.

Friday, May 25, 2007

First two walkers today

Two prompt and willing walkers were here at the gallery at 10 am. I scrambled to print the walking invitations (see posts below to read content of the invitations) and off they were.
One chose for the directed walk, the other for drifting. The day was perfect for a walk, a sunny yet comfortable 20 degrees Celsius.

After about an hour and a half, one walker returned and then the other.

In my attempts to welcome them back, I felt I needed to offer them tea, water or something to eat. Each walk deserves a little treat at the end. Perhaps I need to install a 'before' and 'after' room to allow the walker to shift from arriving before leaving again. Some kind of antechamber to start with. The room for afterwards would be a celebratory space with fruit, water, and light cake.

I asked each of them to leave a mark(s) on the map with push pins related to certain experiences they had on the walk, such as “Where I felt desire” and “Where I wanted to avoid going, but ended up there anyways” and a miniature white flag to designate the place where they finally ended the walk before heading back.

In an attempt to video tape their responses, I set up a camera on the balcony of the gallery and asked them both to answer some basic questions. Although they seemed more comfortable than I did in this situation, it seemed absurd to invite someone to experience a walk and then immediately put them in front of a video camera and ask them questions about it as if it was a formal interview. I was, however, reminded in the interviews how difficult it is to find words to describe how a body experiences. It is far easier to describe what one sees.

Looking back, it was their stories and recollections, the descriptions of the things they saw, felt, and heard that was the most memorable. One shared with me his being in a cemetery with brush blowing around between the headstones. I became a listener to their experience and could imagine them in vivid ways, as if I had also been there.

The other referred to experiencing what he referred to as, “the elusive obvious” in the city. And I could have sworn that their eyes looked different after the walk. More open, wide, curious.

Now, as I write…I wonder if some forms of documentation take one away from the sensory experience even when in the moment of its existence. Now writing about it, this event becomes a memory.

The Drift

Dear Participant,

You are cordially invited to take a walk in Edmonton today, the 25th of May 2007. This walk is to be taken alone in a city that you may know, may not know, or think you know. You have chosen the Drifting Walk.

Drifting is like wandering, an aimless walk with no direction in mind, having nowhere to be. It is about walking in order to experience the city.

You will be guided by your own instinctual desires and impulses as you navigate the city by foot. Try and tune in to what attracts you in the city and let your senses lead you. For instance, you may be drawn to a certain piece of architecture and walk in a direction towards it or simply feel like turning one direction or cutting across a grassy corner simply because that is what seemed right at that moment.

Feel free to drift into buildings and should you have any accidental encounters with people you know in the city or others who engage you in conversation, this becomes part of your drifting experience. Stay open and responsive to the spaces of the city and what resonates for you.


Before you start out, there are a few ground rules:

• Your drift will begin immediately as you leave the front door of Latitude 53
• Allow yourself a minimum of 45 minutes to drift. (2 hours is recommended)
• Turn off your cell phone before you begin.
• Do not carry a map of Edmonton with you.
• Do not have any destination in mind
• Let go of any expectations for this walk
• At the end of your drift, please return to Latitude 53, either by foot or bus to contribute to the post-drift archive.


Please feel free to ask any questions regarding your walk prior to departing.

Enjoy!

The Directed Walk

Dear Participant,

You are invited to take a walk in Edmonton today, the 25th of May 2007. This walk is to be taken alone in a city that you may know, may not know, or think you know. You have chosen the Directed Walk.
The city will be your guide. Before you start out, there are a few ground rules:

• Your walk will begin immediately as you leave the front door of Latitude 53.
• Allow yourself a minimum of 45 minutes to walk, although, you are encouraged to walk for longer.
• Try to walk continuously without stopping. You set the pace, yet when you encounter a stoplight and the red hand signals you to stop, turn and take the other cross walk where the white illuminated figure invites a crossing.
• Do not try to control your route, let the signals of the city take the decisions for you.
• After 45 minutes, or when you decide to end, please return to Latitude 53, either by foot or bus to contribute to the post-walk archive.


Please feel free to ask any questions regarding your walk prior to departing.

Good luck!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Walking Edmonton on May 22, 2007

Walking Edmonton
May 23, 2007


Setting out from the hotel, I turn right and begin walking through a city unfamiliar to me. Avoiding the aid of a map, I allow myself to drift through the city with no particular destination in mind. I have no expectations or desires for this walk. I tune in to the city through my feet that are just now getting in touch with it. In the two hours time I have, I give over to a wandering that privileges a sensorial experience, rather than calling upon a cognitive figuring out of space.

I am walking in the spirit of the dérive (a French concept t meaning aimless walk or drift) used by the Situationists in Paris in the 1960’s to challenge the pedestrian to experience the city in a more whimsical way. It encourages a walking led by one’s emotions and impulses towards space in planned urban environments that either ignore the emotions of its inhabitants or try to control them through design.

My own walking / drifting in Edmonton reveals my fascination and attraction to signs and voids where others may have left traces. I find myself gravitating towards graffiti on a makeshift wall along Jaspers, public signage laid out on the periphery of Sir Winston Churchill Square warning pedestrians not to use skateboards, rollerblades, or bikes, and blank poster frames, and walls that have been tagged or scribbled upon. I spot a billboard poster that is starting to droop, revealing its monochrome wooden board underneath. What lies under the surface and made visible to me, as well as what gets written over is the draw during my walk. These layers of the city feel both melancholic and slightly humorous; the absurd quiet of the city opens up these visual oddities to me over and over.

As part of my walk, I drift into two independent bookstores and back out onto the street. I sit down at a park bench to take notes of the geography I am creating through the city. Pondering notions of tracings, I look down and see a small yellow square drawn in chalk next to my feet. This mark is a remnant of the performances of Visualeyez colleague, Emma Waltraud-Howes. I move to place my feet in the square, filling it in and overlapping with another’s marking of place in the various yet somewhat needy spaces of this city.