What is the Walking Project?

The Walking Project is an interdisciplinary performance, mapping and cultural exchange project collaboratively developed by Walk & Squawk Performance Project with US and South Africa-based artists during a series of residencies in Detroit and KwaZulu-Natal from 2003 through 2006.

The project explores the 'desire lines' or paths made by people who walk across fields in South Africa and across vacant lots in Detroit - and what connects them.

Using these desire lines as a springboard, The Walking Project looks at the paths we walk and how they are formed through culture, geography, language, economics and love. It explores how people make their own paths; how and why people's paths cross; and how changing patterns of movement alter perceptions, attitudes and lives.

Desire lines are those well-worn ribbons of dirt that you see cutting across a patch of grass, often with nearby sidewalks - particularly those that offer a less direct route - ignored. In winter, desire lines appear spontaneously as tramped down paths in the snow. I love that these paths are never perfectly straight. Instead, like a river, they meander this way and that, as if to prove that desire itself isn't linear and (literally, in this case) straightforward.

from wordspy.com

Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Nancy Lautenbach, former Coordinator of Marketing and Programs for Arts at Michigan, worked as faculty advisor with a team of U-M students to develop the following initiatives in collaboration with other U-M faculty and departments:

• A humanities convening on walking in conjunction with performances.
• A printmaking exchange between students from the School of Art and Design, the Residential College and the University of KwaZulu-Natal Department of Fine Arts, to be exhibited at Redd Apple Gallery in Detroit and UKZN in South Africa.
• A curriculum guide to be used for school workshops, performances and teachers' workshops.
• Experimentation with locative technologies to gather information about 'desire lines' and create alternative maps, converting GIS data into audio and visual material for the web, for physical installation and for live performance, in collaboration with the University Map Library.
• Documentation through film and video.

Learn more by visiting www.walksquawk.org where you can link to project information, photos, and a web log with entries from project participants.