ZK/U May Openhaus

Here are some photos from the recent ZK/U Openhaus.

The Die Insel map is now mobile and was exhibited in various spaces in the Stadtgarten and around the ZK/U during the weekend. It has taken on a life of it’s own and can pull a crowd without me. People seem to be drawn to it, keen to read and share the secrets of Moabit.

DSC01963_cropped_small

DSC01853_cropped_small

DSC01971_small

DSC01984_small

Downstairs in the main exhibition space was Unsere Insel, a series of maps created by eighteen Moabit residents. Since the April Openhaus, I have been meeting with Moabiters to hear more of the stories that connect the people of Moabit to the places around them. During the conversations, I asked the residents to draw a map of Moabit. This is what Moabit looks like in the minds of it’s inhabitants.

DSC01942_tweaked_small

DSC01900_small

DSC01913_small

ZK/U April Openhaus

Here are some photos of my project in development from the OpenHaus a few weeks into the residency.

Asha_ZKU2

SAMSUNG CSC

openhauscouple2

openhauspoint2

fish2

SAMSUNG CSC

Samuel22

faisalstairs2

Images 1, 3 & 4 courtesy of Marc Martin; Images 2 & 6 courtesy of Sheraz Khan; Image 7 courtesy of Samuel Kalika; Image 8 courtesy of Faisal Habibi.

Urban Myths

ZKUThe story of the city is written not by the historians or the travel bureaus. It is written and told as its people interact with its places through the simplicity of everyday life. We construct the sounds and the sights of the city with our busking and street art; We give it personality by exchanging smiles, stealing kisses and slamming car horns; We draw the lines on the map through our paths to work… and so on. Our stories build the city, brick by brick, paragraph by paragraph.

I am currently undertaking a four month residency at Berlin’s ZK/U – Centre for Art and Urbanistics – in the neighbourhood of Moabit. Here I will learn the stories that connect the people of Moabit to places that are meaningful to them in the simplest of ways. I will learn where people in Moabit go to cry, to laugh, to kiss, to shelter, to meet, to watch, to avoid.

During the residency at ZK/U, I will act as a Moabit ‘reverse tour guide’. I will invite Moabit residents to take me on tours to show how they connect with their neighbourhood, and what it is that they connect with. My tour guides will be the children, homeless people, architects, buskers, recent immigrants, teachers, the mayor, hipsters, hippies, and most other people too. These stories will be collated in a map of Moabit’s everyday.

This project acts simultaneously as a research project exploring how people connect with our place, the people around us, and our selves, as well as an opportunity for me to experiment with integrating her human ecology and sustainable community development skills and knowledge with my participatory arts practice.

My residency at ZK/U is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts.

on leadership

Laura Wills, 'Public Survey', 2010
Laura Wills, ‘Public Survey’, 2010

I was honoured to have been invited to speak to around seventy 18-24 year olds at the 2013 Rotary Youth Leadership Awards camp one month ago. The RYLA directors, Chris and Bill, asked me to speak about what I do and how I got to be doing it, linked to the themes of leadership and community. It was really valuable to take the time to reflect on these questions while preparing for the presentation, and I thought I’d upload a rough transcript of my presentation. It’s cheesy and earnest like it was meant to be.

Continue reading “on leadership”

In Passing

The morning after In Passing's test run
The morning after In Passing’s test run

Hot off the press… Just this very evening, I’ve launched the website for In Passing, my participatory art project on women’s day to day experiences of power and public space, unpacked through games of pass the parcel. Read all about it and get involved in the games through www.inpassing.com.au

Whoopa!

power, public space and pass the parcel

After reading this Herald Sun (!) article by Victorian Chief Commissioner Ken Lay, I thought this would be a good time to make public a project I’m developing. It’s a participatory community art project that will bring diverse groups of women together to highlight and unpack their day to day experiences of gender, power and public space.

While the issue of violent attacks against women often takes centre stage in the media, this project focuses on the constant undercurrent of gendered power plays that colour our everyday experiences of public spaces. From the lewd comments from men in passing cars, to the penis graffiti that lines our alleyways, to the omnipresent sexualised images of women plastered on bus shelters, these occurrences and images have subtle yet constant effects on our psychology acting as ever present reminders that we can’t get too comfortable in our public streets, that public space isn’t women’s space.

While such instances are considered too trivial to feature in the media or social commentary, they sit on the same spectrum as the more physical and violent acts against women in public space. They affect how we feel on our streets on a day-to-day level.

Through a series of twenty conversations structured in the familiar format of pass-the-parcel, In Passing will open discussions among groups of nine women at a time to reflect on their day-to-day experiences of public space in a light-hearted, constructive and forward-looking manner through a series of facilitated activities. At the same time, by creating opportunities to connect with neighbours, the sense of community and care will be strengthened across the suburb.

Already the project has received interest from across Australia from community leaders, school counsellors and gender studies teachers. In Passing can be considered a pilot for a much wider participatory community art project seeking to highlight and challenge gender inequalities inherent in our cultural norms, and explore ways that women can reclaim our public space.

The project is ready to go – the pass the parcel prototype is ready to be replicated and I’m waiting to hit go on promotions and web development, but I’m just waiting for some funding to come in so I can buy materials. Fingers crossed all these conversations I’m having with a particular organisation will amount to something!