for a walk with…
Collaborative video / Collaborative Publication / Residency
13:08 min / loop
Serpentine Galleries, The Edgware Road Project, London 2013 – 2016
The film 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 for the elderly care home residents experiencing dementia and for the care workers 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 and completed collaboratively over three years, the film draws on the diversity of walks, situations and conversations within 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 for investigating and collaboratively responding to the site-specific problems of everyday life.
Pointing towards a positive acknowledgement of dementia in its alternative understanding of time, space and identity, walking takes on the role of a dynamic artistic 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.
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
