Did you ever dig a big hole, build a hut or set fire to something when you were a kid? Do you remember your first cigarette as a teenager? Did you ever use drugs? Ever had sex somewhere outside? Did you ever miss the last train or bus, and had no place to go to? Did you ever reach the moment when you just had to pee and there was no toilet somewhere near? What kind of place did you look for? It must have been a place without 'value', a space of no economic use. It could have been a wasteland, the bushes near the side of the road, the space under a bridge, an abandoned building. Did you notice that people before you also used that space? That the way leading to it had already been made, that it was actually obvious?From 28the to 31st August Jozua Zaagman and Jacqueline Schoemaker organise a workshop in which we will walk through Brussels Capital Region and look for footpaths and other informal passages that were formed out of need, like 'short cuts' through the grass and holes in fences or hedges. Using a topographic map, you will walk a line through the city that we determine beforehand. You register the informal passages that you come across on this line. The advantage of following a random line is that you observe more sharply than if you followed an existing route, and that you walk through places that you would perhaps not normally choose. You are probably confronted at some point with your own definition of what a passage is. By letting yourself be lead by a random line, you get an objective cross section of the urban environment: main roads, residential areas, parks, industrial estates and sideways.
We walk alone, but at the end of each day we get together to discuss our experiences: what is it like to follow a line? Which borders do you encounter? What do you experience while you traverse the different phases in the cityscape? Do you discover any patterns in the informal passages? What is need? We will make an intense 4 days of it, in which we will focus our attention on the walking itself and the ensuing discussions. You can make pictures of the informal passages you come across, or describe them, film them, or register them in any other way. We will spend Friday processing the collected material (digital and/or physical) into an installation for the Sideways Festival in Brussels on the 1st and 2nd of September.
Read more about the walkshop and register here.
