TOPOGRAPHIES OF DISAPPEARING
My first urban walk in the Footnotes for … Skövde series on 13 September begun under rather unusual circumstances. Today was election day in Sweden, so I had expected very few people to come to the museum. At first, I even thought that the group for our walk might consist solely of the other EULENGASSE artists.
So I changed the concept at short notice. Rather than waiting for people to come to us, we decided to go out and meet them.
I carried a sign in front of me like a small standard: FOLLOW US. OR DON’T. NOW. OR NEXT SUNDAY · 12:30. PRINTS OF TIME → KONSTMUSEET. And each of us was given small strips of paper with the same invitation and a QR code linking to our blog. Equipped in this way, we set off through the town…
The walk became something different from what I had originally planned. The participants were not so much interested in striking visual features.
The frame somehow was mor a portrait searching thing than for framing urban landscapes…
We approached the few passers-by. Some stopped, others carried on walking. Sometimes a brief question turned into a longer conversation. We took photographs of these encounters and invited people to place themselves within the golden frame I was carrying – as if, for a moment, they too could become part of our walk, our picture, our story.
We met Sarah from Nigeria. Perhaps she will come to Vládmir’s dance workshop on Tuesday.
We met Gunilla, who had worked for decades as a nurse at the local hospital. For her photograph, Anette held the golden frame so that the windows of Gunilla’s flat could be seen behind it. For a moment, a piece of the street became an image of her own story.
Instead of details of the urban environment or the architecture, on this walk we collected encounters. Faces. Glances. Stories.
Kjell, a retired journalist from Skövde Nyheter, the long-established local newspaper which ceased publication about a month ago, …
… took an iconic group photograph of us in front of one of the remaining election campaign booths on the main square.
And then Livia came along, five years old, holding her grandmother’s hand.
Her grandparents approached the Hertig Johans Torg from two different directions. They saw each other, walked towards one another and embraced.
We saw the hugging. Only afterwards did we approach them. We introduced ourselves and told them about PRINTS OF TIME and about Vládmir’s project That Hug – Aquele abraço, which he will be developing over the coming weeks.
And then something happened that we had not planned. One embrace became several. People who had only just met began embracing one another. The walk had led us to them.
Small moments in which strangers were connected, just for a moment.
