Walking While Looking Down

As a bridge between Week 2: Walking & Mapping and Week 3: Scores & Instructions, we went on a "scored walk" yesterday around the NW campus. Working in small groups with at least one camera to share, we walked with our eyes trained on the ground.

It was incredible to see not only how much there was to see when looking down, but how our noticing evolved over the 20 minutes of walking. At first it was easy to only see the obvious things -- shiny pieces of trash, big swathes of paint -- but then smaller details and patterns began to emerge. The textures and colours of the asphalt, dark smudges against the lower sections of wall, lost coins and solo almonds, the circle of sneakers around a point or object.

As much as I was keeping my own eyes down on the ground, I was also looking up to see students looking down. It was a delightful sight: groups of teens wandering with their heads down, pairs hunched over clumps of weeds to seek bugs and flowers, cameras passing back and forth, peels of laughter as someone finds something weird or gross or funny and shares it with others.

It continues to amaze me how simple instructions can yield significant results, materially and processually, and just how much looking has to offer.

Photographing while walking while looking down

Self portrait while looking down.

While walking and looking we encouraged students to pick up things that took their interest. I took this small balloon home with me in my pocket, and I still have it. On it in red ink is written an email address that I can't decipher.

While showing the students examples of art made by walking or moving through a space, I had raised the importance of transgression to a lot of these practices, and to art more generally. I have long found art's ability to suspend, push against, or to step outside of social and behavioural rules or expectations one of its most exciting qualities. So the highlight of this walk for me was the moment when one student (who will remain unnamed, but who knows who they are) put this knowledge into practice by picking up this almond from the carpark, only moments after I had photographed it, and promptly eating it.

Shadows of students at work.

Week 2: Walking & Mapping

Francis Alÿs, Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing (Mexico City, 1997)

Francis Alÿs, The Greenline (Jerusalem, 2004)

Hamish Fulton




Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking (1967)


William Pope.L, The Great White Way, , 22 Miles, 9 Years, 1 Street (2001–2009)

Jin-me Yoon, As It Is Becoming (Seoul, Korea): Teum/Passages Through (2008)

Guy Debord / Situationist International (SI)

Dérive: “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.” A an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, in which participants drop their everyday relation and “let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”

Lone Twin, Spiral (2007)

Vito Acconci, Blinks (1969)

Holding a camera, aimed away from me and ready to shoot, while walking a continuous line down a city street.

Try not to blink.

Each time I blink: snap a photo.

1. 18 steps.
2. 34 steps.
3. 20 steps.
4. 12 steps.
5. 8 steps.
6. 22 steps.
7. 7 steps.
8. 14 steps.
9. 26 steps.
10. 10 steps.
11. 56 steps.
12. 18 steps.

Project Overview & Syllabus

Site Stories at NWSS: September - December 2016

Wednesdays, 12:17-1:37pm plus guest visits & field trips TBA

Teaching Artists: Julie Hammond & Mark Cunningham

Classroom Teachers: Jenny Simpson & Dragana Sacco

                      Barbara Kruger, School Bus, 2012

You + Place + Ideas + Time = Art

SITE STORIES is a semester long project led by artists Julie Hammond and Mark Cunningham. Over the next 13 weeks, you and your classmates will explore the site and stories behind NWSS using tools and techniques from contemporary art.

As you know, New Westminster Secondary School (NWSS) is an uniquely storied site. Beneath its crumbling carpark lie an Aboriginal burial ground, a number of unmarked Chinese graves, and barracks once used by the Royal Westminster Regiment. Today over two thousand students learn and gossip in classrooms and hallways that have been slated for upgrade since 2002. From asbestos to lightning strikes, hauntings to the drinking water incident, there are stories to be shared and discovered.

Over the course of this project you will:

• Become more familiar with the various histories that intersect in the site of NWSS;
• Share and activate your own stories about the school;
• Learn about a diverse range of strategies that various artists have used to engage place, spaces, stories, and people over the last 100 years;
• Devise, execute and display (exhibit, perform…) your own artistic project that responds in some way to the site of the school.

Outline: what we will be doing when-(ish)

Weeks 1-4ish: What do artists actually DO, anyway?

                              Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967.

Over the first four (or so) weeks, you will be introduced to a diverse range of artists, readings, and art practices from the last 100 years. Using the practices of these artists as inspiration, we will undertake weekly group and individual activities that begin to engage with various sites within the school.

Weeks 5-8ish: And what exactly are WE supposed to do again?

Adrian Piper, Catalysis III, 1970.

Working individually and in small groups, you will continue to explore the work and practices of living artists, specifically artists chosen based on your own interests and research to this point. During this phase, you will begin the messy process of developing, sharing, and critiquing each other’s studies or concepts for your final projects.

Weeks 9-12ish: You want us to do WHAT?

John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, (1971)

For the final phase of the project you will be invited to imagine the classroom and school site as a studio where you will conceive, research, and implement your own artistic projects. Each piece will be developed for or based on a specific location within the school, and may take the form of an installation, performance, audio or walking tour, video, or whatever. We will do our best to enable you to work in whatever form or medium you feel best suits your project.

Week 13: Show and Tell

                            GIllian Wearing, Dancing in Peckham, 1994.

Yes, you will be making work to be publically exhibited, performed, or displayed in some way. How and where exactly this all happens is yet to be decided. It will depend on the kinds of projects you make, and the way the project progresses throughout the semester. Following this public showing of work, you will be led through a basic critical protocol to share feedback and reactions to each other’s work.

Other bits and pieces

                                  David Shrigley, Untitled (I will show the world how brilliant I am), 2014.

Each student will be provided with a SITE STORIES journal. While some in and out of class exercises will be completed in your journal, these books are primarily places for you to gather ideas, notes, stories, and images. We encourage you to make this your own space. Please note: you will be invited to share some content from your journal with your classroom teachers and the teaching artists to assist us in tracking your work and in supporting the development of your individual projects.

SITE STORIES will use the NWSS site, and the stories associated with it, as primary material. Other physical materials--from paint to paper and items we haven’t thought of yet--will be provided. We encourage you to find ways of making art with materials and technologies that are widely available. If your project (see Weeks 8-12) requires specialty equipment, we will do our best to make it happen. No experience with art making of any kind is necessary for you to take part in this project.

All students are expected to actively participate in the SITE STORIES project, and you can expect to be actively supported by artists and teachers alike in undertaking your projects. Your participation includes completing in-class exercises, out of class reading and research, and actively supporting your peers. In addition, each student will contribute at least one post to the SITE STORIES blog. That's HERE!