for a walk with

Film. 13:08 min.

Serpentine Galleries, The Edgware Road Project, London 2016

The film derives from the For a Walk With… project I have initiated in 2013 in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, and the Carlton Dene and Westmead Elderly Resource Centres in London. For a Walk With… is an invitation for the elderly care home residents experiencing dementia and for the care workers to go for a walk. Departing from the act of walking and unfolding in the framework of residential care and city planning, the project explores issues surrounding dementia, the politics of care, redevelopment, city and memory.

Developed and finalised collaboratively over the duration of three years, the film draws on the diversity of walks, situations and conversations inside the care home. Working through the pragmatic and aesthetic concerns surrounding the practice of residential care, the film departs from walking as a useful method to investigate and collaboratively respond to the site-specific problems in the everyday.

Pointing towards a positive acknowledgement of dementia in its alternative understanding of time, space and identity, walking takes role of a dynamic research practice allowing to critically contest current understandings of redevelopment, city and residential care. While acknowledging paradigmatic notion of redevelopment as a state of urban amnesia, the project points towards dementia as a more appropriate way of reading and navigating the city in its development and planing.

The project is complemented by the publication For a Walk With: Dementia in the City

Enormous gratitude for the manifestation of the project goes to Phyllis Etukudo and the residents and care workers of the Carlton Dene and Westmead Elderly Resource Centres, who co-developed the project over three years. This appreciation extends to Janna Graham, Amal Khalaf and Ben Messih, at the Serpentine Galleries.


Serpentine Galleries: Project Page