April 2011, Recyclart, Brussels

This was a walk in which participants experiment with low-key shields against being watched by surveillance camera’s. Starting at Recyclart in Brussels, we visited some nearby relevant locations; where camera signals could be captured, where we could play in view of installed camera’s.

We passed by the ‘Parking Panorama‘ (Rue Van Helmont): a circular building now used as an indoor parking, that once housed the panorama canvas painted by Louis Dumoulin in 1912 for the celebration of the first centenary of the battle of Waterloo, where we looked at documentation of the Street with a View project by Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley.

We created our own ‘satellite view’ using camera’s suspended from helium balloons.

A paper guide to the walk was produced. Download a PDF here.

Prior to the walk, we printed out some images of doorsteps that were captured from surveillance camera’s. The prints were mounted on sticks. When hold up to the same camera from which the images originated, they camouflage the space below the image. See a demonstration in this video.

A television news item was broadcasted by the popular program ‘Flanders today / Vlaanderen Vandaag’ on the channel VT4 in which some of the aims and methods of the walk are explained. (See video here, Dutch only)

Radio 1 broadcasted a report of the walks in the program De Ochtenden. (Download soundfile here)

On board of this boat ride some prominent Tilburg party people who talked about new party routines, such as the ‘new years dive’, and how feasts and traditions change over time. With: Paul Spapens (author), Miranda Poel (artist), Sjef Huggers (Motorclub ‘t Motorrijerke), Ton Vialle (stichting Kermis-cultuur), Corné Snels (Hardy hairdresser)

This event was organised in the framework of the project Huis Boom Feest by Wapke Feenstra.

Ballade sous video surveillance, 27-02-2010

Several walks organised in collaboration with Constant and the Human Rights League (LDH) in Brussels in 2010. The walks allowed a peak inside private spaces, apartments, bars, by capturing images from unsecured wireless surveillance camera’s. Julien Pieret, lawyer and publicist walked with us and contextualised our actions by explaining relating articles from the Belgian ‘surveillance camera law’.

The goal of these walks were multiple: raising awareness for the fact that bad equipment leads to inferior protection of privacy sensitive images, a surreal walk through interior spaces that otherwise can never be entered, a public debate about private images in public spaces.

See also ‘Stare‘, a video that was made using imagery captured from wireless surveillance cameras.

Images of the walk can be found here:
http://gallery3.constantvzw.org/index.php/ballade-sous-surveillance

Peter Westenberg and Martijn Tellinga; 60 minutes, 7 tracks, dutch spoken, 2009

A narrated audiowalk about migration, networks, roots, relations and culture, situated in the quarter Osdorp in Amsterdam. While walking with a map and a mp3 player, the walker listens to a story told from the perspective of several local and exotic plants. Point of departure is garden ‘De Wiedijk’ a green oases in this residential area.

Commissioned by Soundtrackcity
More info on the site of soundtrackcity: (Dutch)
http://www.soundtrackcity.nl/amsterdam/wandelingen/osdorp/

Download audiofiles as .zip:
http://download.omroep.nl/vpro/destad/soundtrackcity/Soundtrackcity%20Osdorp.zip

Slideshow video impression of the walk:
http://www.archive.org/details/Autochtuin

with Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Performative walk, Ping festival, Spain, 2008,

Balearic Routes + Routines proposed group walks through the commercial heart of Palma de Majorca. Wearing shoes that were equiped with sensors, wireless camera’s, and other detection devices walkers explored privately owned radio signals, public magnetic fields, commercial area’s while sniffing for wifi video signals and captured data from unusual viewpoints.

Short documentation video:
http://www.archive.org/details/BalearicRoutesRoutines

Series of performative walks, 2006, Brussels, produced by Constant

Visit the projects website for full documentation

The project Routes + Routines takes place in residential areas in Brussels. Through interventions, actions and presentations in public space, the project creates dialogs with the day-to-day reality of the street corner, roundabout or zebra-crossing. R + R looks at the relation between technology, geography, urban representation and visual imagination and investigates the city from inside out.

The recent re-validation of Situationism has staged the city again as a platform for spectacles, unexpected situations and aesthetic coincidences, the city as a layered locus with unique live and logic, a chaotic post-industrial organism where functionalism and planning team up with historic remains and social marginality.

In an informationalist Utopian world vision everything can be interpreted as programmable and the city is no exception. Routes + Routines proposes a comparison between on the one hand romantic notions of urbanity in which the individual experience is the starting point for a subjective interpretation of locations and on the other: the structure of binary language where all information can be reduced to opposites; to zero’s and ones.

If cities, social groups and identities can simply be regarded as programmable entities, can we than approach cities as hardware on which social, economic, political programme’s play; directing and determining behavior, movement, norms, interactions and relations between citizens? Can we question how this programmability is employed and re-think and re-model urban power structures, dominance of capital, racial injustice, property, normality? How can urban programs that are seemingly fixed be diverted, changed and appropriated?

Routes + Routines investigate low-tech means of communication and is curious about the potential of no tech-media such as gossip, backchat, word to mouth in a world dominated by (communication) strategies. How can looking, observing and reporting be recaptured from the paradigm of control and surveillance and how can they be employed to stimulate the imagination of citizens? How can we map multi -plicity, -culturality, -layering and changeability starting from the details and individual observation rather then the bird perspective?

Walking with Crispin, Dordrecht, 2005

Forgotten stories are re-discovered, tales are told and new myths are constructed during three walks through the Dordrecht neighborhood Krispijn (Crispin). The project website contains lots of info, Dutch only.