Unlearning Walking Club

Unlearning Walking Club

Public project – Unit Pitt, Vancouver, 2014 – collaboration with Catherine Grau

We have spent the last 5 years exploring realms beyond the world that we know; an intention we call unlearning. Much of our unlearning was done as more spectacular performative gestures that engage a public in disrupting habitual narratives. Alongside this work, we began to develop smaller daily gestures that strived for a lasting personal impact and constituted an ongoing practice of unlearning. In undertaking this more personal practice we chose to simplify and go inward. We began to take solitary walks, reflecting and writing after each walk in order to share our discoveries with each other. This approach enabled us to better understand and confront our own perceptions and experiences. Walking became a “search for something intangible” (R.Solnit, pg.45). We walked to clear our minds, to find some silence, to engage with public life, to transform a mood, to wrestle politics, to find some light, to touch nature, to feel alone, to feel connected… These walks introduced unlearning into our daily lives and have become a practice we continue to build and explore.

*More information on the project website: unlearningwalkingclub.tumblr.com