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.