How do we exist in relation to the physical surroundings of the city? How do we remember, record, and interpret the experience of our day-to-day urban journeys? And how are these emotional responses to cityscapes (and cityscapes themselves) turned into forms of symbolic production which bear certain cultural significance?
Walking, a mundane activity as it is, allows artists to explore the city at a purposefully slow pace, with sensory attentiveness, and with a specific authorial intention. The deliberate act of walking is often documented, (aesthetically) treated, translated, discussed, transformed, and presented in different forms and in various cultural contexts.
In this workshop, participants are invited to discuss the implications of walking, cityscape, memory, and language. They are also asked to develop different strategies to explore the city (the Hoxton neighbourhood in particular) and carry out a walking project. By contextualising their strategies with artworks of other practitioners, the participants will experiment with different approaches and aesthetics, and translate their experience into artistic languages and forms.
Artist bio:
Naifei Wu
www.naifeiwu.com
Born 1989 in Taiwan. Currently lives and works in London.
Naifei’s works include performance, web project and other process-based, post-studio practices. Centring around topics such as languages, mediation, empirical experiences, and cognitive models, her artistic practice aims to investigate issues critical to our contemporary (digital) society with the use of sociolinguistic tools and technology (data science and machine learning). An interpersonal approach is often employed under an open-ended framework that invites participation. Since most projects are socially-engaging and process-based in nature, verbal/written, audio or sometimes visual documentation of the process is one of the main presentation forms to be showcased in exhibitions with purposefully minimal aesthetic treatments.
