Walking (disrupting, blurring, glitching) -
margin to centre
[re]
2022
Various cities
Walk
Turin, Italy | October 2022
Johannesburg, South Africa | coming soon
Zürich, Switzerland | coming soon
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
uses walking as a mode of engagement for responding to a central question that through geographic design Black women have been implicated in: what is safe space? How do we come to understanding safe space in spatial terms? How do we enact a sense of safe space in cities?
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
extends on existing scholarship built and being built by Black feminist scholars; from bell hooks’ exploration of margin and centre, to Katherine McKittrick’s offering on the cartographies of Black women, to Legacy Russel’s exploration of the glitch as a mode of affecting change, to the endless uncited bodies of Black women seeking to find a sense of safety in cities by being in them, pausing in them, dwelling in them, walking in them, risking their bodies in them.
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
is a method for critically engaging with the deficiencies and possibilities of safe space. How might our cities tend to us? How might we tend to them? As a mode of engagement in motion, the process of continuously walking through the city actively tends to the it, recognising its constantly shifting characteristics.
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
lends from psychogeographic methods, recognising the mental and psychological aspects entangled in our experiences of the city on the ground, situating and focusing on our reactions to our surroundings. As we walk, we carve lines into our environments, we are affecting our environments and being affected by our environments— sensing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching. We are able to pick up on hints, we are able to listen to the city, by spending time with and in it.
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
critically exposes the figure of the Flaneur as a false universal ideal way of engaging with the city, as the figure of the Flaneur is premised on exclusive abilities — namely the freedom to move, freedom to choose, freedom to pause, freedom to ponder — essentially the freedom to explore the city.
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching— margin to centre
recognises that the Flaneur is not the goal nor the ideal, but rather a point of departure to think about engaging in a mode of resistance to social issues that are embedded in our cities. When we walk as Black women in many cities, we not only resist structures that have not considered non-dominant ways of being but we positively glitch the city, using walking as a mechanism for revealing that which often goes overlooked, that which is possible.
Walking, disrupting, blurring, glitching — margin to centre
is a series of walks, displayed through this platform reflecting an ongoing practice and ritual of walking in different cities from margin to centre, a spatial score designed and walk conducted by Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk. Through walking, how can we consciously enact and try to understand how cities foster choice, pause and ponder? Characteristics of safe space that we could embrace and affect through design in our cities as spatial practitioners.
SCORE
- Search for the border of the city, search for the centre, online. Top-down.
- Choose a location at the city border, the margin.
- Record the day, time, conditions around you. Take a photograph.
- Walk in an unorganised line but concentrated direction to the city centre.
- When conditions seem to noticeably and considerably change, take a photograph.
- Do not stop walking, record your observations through sound notes.
- Once you feel you have arrived at the centre, record the time and conditions around you.
- When possible, repeat this exercise from different marginal points, at different times, in different conditions.
Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk© 2024