12 STEPS AND A HOLE IN THE VALLEY
2018, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Harz. Walkshop in collaboration with Andreas Döpke.
2018, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Harz. Walkshop in collaboration with Andreas Döpke.
We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary, we already see so much. — Robert Walser, “A Little Walk”
What can you do with a hole in the valley? Where can you ramble when the earth no longer holds? Do the landscapes of non-cities and their seductive call to solitude remain compelling in times of urban disintegration? How can city-dwellers avoid the risks of escapism while attending to the real challenges of the rural-urban metabolic rift? Is there room to conceive of and create responsible and common futures that overcome the false dichotomies of nature-culture and rural-urban? What might be learned and unlearned in the augmented topographies of such ruined landscapes? How to wander over and under such unsteady ground?
This one-day walkshop, commissioned by the University of Hildesheim, is created by the artist Barbara Marcel, in collaboration with the geographer Andreas Döpke. It aims to bring together students of various disciplines, such as cultural studies, philosophy, geography and performing arts, in the historic, cultural landscape of the western Harz. Through a combination of collective and individual walking experiments, the world heritage region will be set up as a temporary and dynamic station for the collaborative imagining of past and future landscapes.
