‘Evental’ digital walking in A Different LENS

Elspeth (Billie) Penfold

A Different Lens is a collaborative project by twelve artists who co-created an interactive walking digital map of Margate in 2020. Each artist was asked to choose an author who is blind or became visually impaired during their lifetime. The project brief asked the artists to respond through a story presented as a walk in Margate and on a geolocative map. Initially, this was designed to widen access to the walking experience, and particularly, to enable disabled artists to participate. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and ensuing lockdown, meant that the co-creative experience for all contributing artists shifted from being a hybrid experience to a fully digital one. 

I was interested to find out how this shift changed the co-creative experiences of the contributing artists to this project. Often, when we evaluate events and their impact, we are too focused on numbers— measuring what we can observe, such as how many attendees. One of digital media’s attraction is the easy access to these numbers. Rather than focus on the ‘numbers’, my research took a phenomenological perspective, paying particular attention to the ‘evental’, i.e. considering impact in terms of the transformative experiences of the people who were engaged in the digital co-creation of the project, rather than evidencing the impact primarily through the event’s reach.

Once we became aware that our project would be entirely digital with no possibility of hybrid in-person artist-led walking, we took the decision as a group to create a digital map with many different entry points and no set route. This would not have been the case if we had planned an in person walking event. The entries on the map are made up of many threads (texts, photos, video, and sound) that are spun together to create multi-layered stories. Some of these are secret or hidden. When you look at the map, it has repeat patterns of blue, green, grey, and pink. Each colour represents an area in Kent. These locations are placed on the green surface of the GPS satellite mapping. This connects the entries and leads you to explore the location. 

My own experience in the co-creation of the map for A Different LENS connects to the past culture of the Andes, through the Quechua language, an indigenous language of weaving and threads: Ayni, Ukhu, Tinku, Q'iwa, and Ushay.[2] These words offer an Andean worldview that is complex, layered, and based on a different understanding of the world to that of most people in the West. The digital layering of the map illustrates a complex, multi-layered world view. It looks within and without, down and behind, beyond as well as ahead, and invites participative storytelling that counters an emphasis on a linear forward trajectory.[3]

I interpret the highlighted locations as the 'ushay' of the map. 'ushay' is a universal property that all people, animals, things, and artworks seek to achieve. It has no one appearance but is a manifestation of the overall cyclical thinking that characterizes First Nations; it differs substantially from the linear thinking prevalent in modern Western cultures. The repetition, complementarity, and holistic entities are more valued than mono-dimensional and directional ones. Additionally, the changes to the project necessitated by COVID-19 coincides with ‘ushay’, where the balance of the group takes precedence over the individual, both socially and artistically. 

Prior to my walks I create quipu chords in my studio. Quipu is a Quechua word for a knot. Quipus were used by the Incas, primarily for record-keeping and sending messages by runners throughout the empire. There were several 'quipucamayocs' or quipu keepers in each village. During the walks I asked participants to make knots in the quipu chords as a mindful act to encourage participants to remember aspects of the walk. In acknowledging the absence of a physical gathering due to the current pandemic restrictions, I used quipuknots as a metaphor to guide my thinking. I took on the role of a quipucamayoc as I unknotted the ideas as they emerged. Thinking through the process of craft helped me to reflect as I explored the ideas of A Different Lens and developed new projects.[4]

I created an entry pinpointed on our map at Buenos Ayres Street in Margate. The collage “Caminito” illustrates how a road in Margate, through its reference to Argentina’s capital, became entwined in my mind with La Boca in Argentina (see Figure 5). This is where migrant families like my own grandparents landed. Buenos Ayres street was given its name because of Margate’s connection with Argentina as a port where corned beef was landed. I had been told during one of my previous walks in Margate that there had been a motion by residents to have the street name changed during the Falklands conflict. As we moved from a hybrid event to a completely digital event the project involved family members in a way that previous projects had not. Because the project was based at home, family members contributed towards the creation of the entries, initially assisting with the technology, but then becoming interested in the project itself and actively contributing to the content of entries.

Socially engaged art, and the co-creative experience, is transformed through a digital experience, which requires changes in the production of the artwork. We struggled to continue with our established artistic practice while also compromising with a digital format. When we started to work on the project there was an expectation by the artists of an in-person co-creation and a hybrid delivery. Becoming completely digital affected the experience and changed both the content and its delivery. As I wrote about the story of our experience, I realised the value of working with artists who can think creatively beyond a design and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

Our total focus on digital mapping widened our project locations from their original focus in Margate. Locative media ’transform[s] both real and imagined spaces’,[6] and contributes to a collapse of space as we were able to connect our responses across time and place.[7] It contributed to an intertwining of subjects and objects which became the characters in the multi-layered narrative of A Different LENS. My own auto-ethnographic reflection, which can be listened to in my entry on the map gave me a clearer understanding of the socially engaged experiences that were offered through multiple locations. A focus on the evental helped me to widen my understanding of the scope of the event experience. It allowed the word to come alive, and within it, to contain many dimensions and vibratory forms in space and time as Cecilia Vicuña lines below suggest: 

A word once written risks becoming linear,

but word and thread exist on another dimensional plane.

Vibratory forms in space and in time. 

Thread and Word, Cecilia Vicuña

You can find the whole research paper and a full bibliography here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352404125_A_Different_LENS

Author

I am a textile artist who produces and delivers walking projects through the arts group Thread and Word. This arts group is inspired by a poem of the same name written in 1970 by the Chilean artist, walker, and activist, Cecilia Vicuña. The poem references threads and uses weaving as a metaphor for engaging with each other and the world around us to build healthy communities. As an acknowledgment of the poem's evocative influence and to assist in the storytelling, I introduced each section of the written research discussion with selected extracts from the poem.

The Thread and Word walking events are produced in collaboration with artists and the wider community. I am presenting here a brief overview of my research into the co-creation of the digital walking event A Different LENS. This project was designed to be delivered using locative media and can be found on the Cgeomap.eu platform  https://cgeomap.eu/adifferentlens/. My research was undertaken for the Major Research Project which was the final module for my MA in Creative Events Management at Falmouth University.

The research into A Different LENS examined the shifting experiences of ten artists in the co-creation and delivery of this socially engaged artwork. It revealed the transformational effect on the co-creative experience that happened when the project moved solely online because of lockdown. The research findings were presented as a living story that makes connections with the ancient art of Andean textiles informed by my Latin American background and my artist walking practice.

Notes

[1] Vicuña, Cecilia, 1996, ‘Hilo y Palabra’

[2] Stone, Rebecca, 2017, ‘Dialogues in Thread: the quechua concepts of Ayni, Ukhu, Tinku , Q’iwa, and Ushay’. Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles.

[3] Billinghurst, Helen, Claire Hind, and Phil Smith (eds.), 2020. Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions. Axminster, Triarchy Press.

[4] Adamson,G,2020, ‘Thinking through Craft’, London, Bloomsbury.

[5] Vicuña, Cecilia, 1996, ‘Hilo y Palabra’

[6] Frears 2017

[7] Haraway, Donna J. 2016, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press