A Here and a There

Exhibitors: Santiago Escobar Jaramillo, Holly Gilbert, Paul Halliday, Marjolein Houben, Rachel Jones, David Kendall, David Killeen, Lanis Levy, Rebecca Locke, Holly McGlynn, Estelle Vincent, Francesca Weber-Newth, Laura Wester, Lorenz Widmaier.

How we make sense of, and move about in, the city depends on who we are and where we have both come from and ‘arrived’; gender, race, nationality and class inevitably weigh heavily in the equation. Walking through the city allows a particularly unique type of engagement with the urban space and permits one to experience the city at its most personal level. Walking through the city is crucial to creating its space:

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character: a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an unnumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these “real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city.” They are not localized; it is rather that they spatialize. 

(Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1988: 97)

Utilising the city of Berlin as site for exploration, A Here and a There was a photographic exhibition, exploring how fourteen photographers affiliated with the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London, combine their photographic practices with the activity of ‘walking’ in the city.

The exhibition was sponsored by Openvizor and was part of Urban Encounters.