Paper short abstract:

Alternative Do-It-Yourself City-Walks are specific to different cities. By conversing with the locals and onsite walking, the artist maps-out hidden spaces significant to collective memory, leading to a narrative based on a mix of fantasy and reality. The narrative forms part of a DIY sound-walk.

Paper long abstract:

Alternative Do-It-Yourself City-Walks are specific to different cities. Starting off with a series of conversations with the locals, the artist gains knowledge about their day-to-day experience of their city. Gleaning information from these conversations, together with onsite-research walking, visual note-taking and drawn fieldnotes, the artist maps-out a number of hidden and/or neglected spaces, significant to personal and collective memory, so as to write a fictional-narrative.

The narrative forms basis for a sound-walk that takes the shape of a DIY walk, inviting the walker to enter a one-to-one relationship with the city. Through a combination of recorded ambience sounds and voiceover narration, one is guided through different neighbourhoods and streets. These walks purposefully move away from the touristic centre and focus on the outer districts/areas often neglected by authorities. During such one and a half to two-hour walks one passes through spaces and places that are not so popular, but are significant to the daily lives and memory of the local inhabitants. Each DIY walk is also complemented with a series of illustrated maps, which help indicate the way. From time to time the DIY walk invites the walker to get a live experience of the place here and now.

Through a mix of fantasy and reality it is up to the walker to decide how to interpret the experience, whether to take it as a fact, a metaphor or a dream.

The paper will focus on two walks in: Vienna in Austria and Haarlem in The Netherlands.