Walk Talk Eat TalkSomeMore
Project description
“Walk, Talk, Eat, Talk Some More” is a multi-city, multi-day project in and between London, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Malmö, Portland, Stockholm, Tallinn, Berlin and San Francisco. The project is an experimental hybrid of similar work by Ccred & the 16 beavergroup (Counter Cartographies, Alt.Space), BASEKAMP & The Institute for Advanced Architecture (Evident Use), 0009 (platial) and the Bureau of Research into Post Autonomy. It constitutes an attempt to explore the different geographical territories and political terrains of each city and create a space of engagement through dialogue. The open-ended nature of the project contributes to creating a practice where the idea of a final product, a culmination or conclusion becomes redundant, underlining the importance of the process, more than the outcome. The hybrid project itself, and this site, is thus necessarily and by definition a work in progress.
The program includes three interlinked components: a collective counter.cartography walk through our different contexts; an alt.space meal (supper, dinner, luncheon) taking place in our different cities and linking us through the questions we pose to one another; and a concluding discussion taking the form of a web-cast linking us in real-time dialogue.
Details
Event #1: The Walk
The walk will take place in the different participating cities the first week of April. Our intention is to link the notion of post-autonomy, which claims that art is in fact lodged in various contexts, to a collective and critical interrogation of the local contexts in which our practices are situated. This interrogation will take the form of a counter.cartography collective walk. To participate you simply have to:
(1) Get one or more person(s) to join you.
(2) Set an itinerary based on two or more sites that hold some particular contextual, cultural, socio-political significance within your local terrain.
(3) Start walking with flag markers, a camera, and a notepad.
(4) At each site on your itinerary, stake a flag and make a stop (maybe for a coffee or a drink, or just to rest) and open up to discussion of the contextual, cultural and socio-political meanings and implications of the site you visit and/or the space you have traversed in order to get there.
(5) Before you leave, take a photograph of this site and try to somehow document the discussion/dialogue you’ve had – perhaps by articulating one or more question interrogating the site where you stopped.
(6) Upload the documentation generated (the photographs and the questions and/or brief outlines of your discussion) onto the project map. These photos and texts will then serve as a basis for a discussion in further events.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006.
This month we saw the start of a multi-city, multi-event program Walk-Talk-Eat-TalkSomeMore with walks taking place in different cities around Europe and North America. We are now planning Event #2, a series of meals to take place in participating cities. Each group will organize a meal autonomously. In Philadelphia the meal will take place on: Tuesday, April 18, 6.00 pm at BASEKAMP space. The meal is open to anyone interested to join the discussion.
Event #2: The Meal
What are these meals?
These meals are intended to be occasions where we can:
(1) Explore and engage with each other’s walks through the project blog (http://www.ccred.org/walk/weblog.php) as well as through the platial made from each walk (search for walk-talk-eat-talk on http://www.platial.com). Everyone involved will be invited to pose questions in response to walks taking place in other cities (for instance, the London group can pose a question to the Philadelphia group, the Malmo group to the Chicago group, and so on and so forth). These questions can be posed beforehand, using the comment function on the project blog or the platial map of the relevant city, but the meals themselves will offer further opportunity to collectively pose questions that will then be uploaded onto the blog/maps following each meal.
(2) Ask questions of each other and each other’s practices (for instance, CCRED can ask a question of BASEKAMP, Signal can ask a question of Mess Hall, and so on and so forth). These questions can be submitted to the project blog (http://www.ccred.org/walk/weblog.php) beforehand and will be read out and responded to during the dinner. The meals themselves, however, will also offer further possibilities to ask questions of each others practices, both locally and across the wider terrain constituted by the link between our different cities. All responses and discussion will be recorded and uploaded as MP3’s onto the project blog following the meals (http://www.ccred.org/walk/weblog.php).
(3) Collectively come up with questions and issues to be addressed at the final event of the program – Part III: The Talk – a video conference linking our different cities in real time dialogue.
Wednesday, May 3, 2006.
Last month we saw a multi-city, multi-event program Walk-Talk-Eat-TalkSomeMore with walks, and meals, taking place in different cities around Europe and North America. We are now planning Event #3: The Web Cast - an experimental web-video conference between groups in each participating city, using a combination of webcam feeds, skype with live audio streaming, and instant messaging.
Event #3: The Web Cast
The final component of the event is a real-time concluding web-cast / video conference. This will take place on May 3 for all cities involved (times will be confirmed asap). Technical details and on-line assistance will be provided by BASEKAMP to contributors before the event. This will be an occasion to meet ‘virtually’ in our different groups and discuss the project, and more specifically, the various potentials, problems and limits of the notion of post-autonomy. It will also offer an opportunity to come back to previous issues and questions.
The event will start with an agenda set by participants at the beginning of the discussion. How it will then proceed is each city will briefly present on their Walks and Meals from the previous two events, and raise issues that came up during these events as topics for further discussion. After we move through this process for all participating cities, the Web Cast will conclude with some Q & A of each other and our practices.
Tuning-in is open to anyone, from home or work during the scheduled time, at the following link:
HYPERLINK “http://org.elon.edu/basekamp”http://org.elon.edu/basekamp
Feel free to respond via the Instant Message Box with your own questions or comments… See you there!