for a walk with: dementia in the city
Publication
Serpentine Galleries, The Edgware Road Project, London, UK 2016
This publication stems from the project For a Walk With…, which I 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 to elderly care home residents with dementia and their carers to go for a walk. Starting from the act of walking and unfolding in the context of residential care and urban planning, the project explores issues around dementia, the politics of care, redevelopment, the city and memory. Developed as a multi-year artist residency between 2013 and 2016, the publication extends the collective experience of walking as a useful research methodology and collaborative response to the site-specific problems of the everyday.
Pointing towards a positive recognition of dementia in its alternative understanding of time, space and identity, walking takes on the role of a dynamic research practice that allows for a critical interrogation of current understandings of redevelopment, the city and residential care. While acknowledging the paradigmatic notion of redevelopment as a state of urban amnesia, the project points to dementia as a more appropriate way of reading and navigating the city in its development and planning.
For a Walk With: Dementia in the City highlights the enormous potential of dementia to provide a useful methodology for addressing the diversity of conditions and processes, such as living and ageing in a city, that we may not be able to walk away from so easily.
Further links and references:
Publication Download:
The Edgware Road Project
Publication Design:
Sophie Demay, Annelous Konijnenberg
Cover design and print:
Hato
Possible Studies Editors: Amal Khalaf, Janna Graham and Ben Messih. Copy editing by: Camille Barbagallo. Author: Anton Kats
