Walking inCommon
is an experimental tool a series of podcasts from the field
the guidelines for the collaborator are a provocation or a prompt
a way to reimagine their own practice and research in relation to a specific site geography, event, or memory
Walking inCommon
a model for mobile situated knowledge
I use the situated/pedagogic learning of Perween Rahman, the urban scholar and activist shot in Karachi (2013). Her method of the walking-map formed the basis to map the informal settlements and urban infrastructure of Orangi Town, Karachi, through the work of OPP-RTI.*
In her words, a map (for us) is like an X-Ray (for the doctor), which tells us the problem so we can resolve it. These maps developed environmental literacy and advocacy within the OPP community and beyond, to eventually support legal claims for land rights.
Rahman was involved in a process of embodied mapping, which enabled her to understand the social and political relations, domestic and gendered spaces of the neighborhoods in which she was working.
By taking this model, I explore how ideas of a performative, embodied mapping allows for multiple ways of sensing the land and the body.
Through a set of podcasts, I place Rahman’s ‘voice’ in conversation with other voices; to draw lines from a field site and situate the collaborator, and the work of Rahman within the intersection of postcolonial/ feminist and environmental justice struggles.
*Orangi Pilot Project- Research and Training Institute (OPP-RTI)
Walking inCommon is a set of creative collaborations that developed from my MA at the Center for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Guidelines for Collaboration
LOCALITY / LOCATION describe the space where you are standing give a sense of the texture of this place. Why is this location/ site significant. What is your memory of this space.
Is it an industrial site - a ruin - a site for demolition - a street crossing or a historic building. Take your time to create the space; people listening don’t know where you are. There is no problem if you repeat things, it can be edited.
SENSORY describe the light, the time of day, sense of the atmosphere and temperature. Is it humid, cold, frosty. Can you record a short clip of the sounds around you. The sound of walking on gravel/ through leaves, birds, the noise of traffic or people, are you in a demonstration, or a demolition site.
RESPOND can you situate the walk and your position in relation to the materials/ ideas you are working with. Consider how this walk/ location can respond to the ideas you are thinking through. Is your response to this in the form of a poem you are reading or a set of sound recordings from your location.
Can you build on your knowledge of this location in a way that is sensory and critical. Can you think of this as a testimony - speaking descriptively or conceptually, or simply as a situated gesture.
CONDITION did the pandemic make you rethink your practice. What kinds of coping mechanisms did you develop. In each city, there were a set of conditions that we were navigating: the lockdowns - limitations on movement - curfews (Karachi) - surveillance app (UK) - the use of greater policing (Paris) - the imbalance in the racial statistics of those losing their life.
Episode 1:
Walking across Disciplines
Taking the idea of a map as an X-Ray for the body, Naiza Khan develops a series of creative collaborations in which she puts the ‘voice’ of Perween Rahman and the work of OPP-RI in conversation with other voices – visual practitioners, scholars and activists.
She calls this process Walking inCommon, and through this gesture, she explores ideas of a performative, embodied mapping.
Sound: recordings from Wimbledon Common, London Freesound: Tired Ghosts Piano, Tyballer92
Episode 2:
Formal - Informal Interface and Public Space Making
Architect Asiya Sadiq Polack discuss ideas of public-space-making, through her current project in Place Liedts, Schaerbeek, Brussels; and the ways in which her training in Karachi and work with OPP-RTI has informed her ideas on recognition, recording and redistribution.
Asiya Sadiq is an architect-urbanist-academic, currently a PhD scholar and visiting lecturer at K.U.Leuven Belgium and an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, NED University Karachi. Her professional practice (2000 to date) in partnership with architect Christophe Polack follows the motto “Cities,Citizens and Spaces” which aspires for and promotes socially resilient projects engaging; ecology, history, social and cultural diversity, local identities, and their inherent formal/informal interfaces. Documenting and promoting “Public Space Making” is an essential part of their practice in which ; research, academics, and stakeholder’s participation results in the co-creation of knowledge which is shared with their students, peers, and the profession at large.
Sound: Freesound, Garuda 1982
Episode 3:
Walking back over a Karachi line Sustainability, Karachi, and Other Irreconcilables
Journalist Mahim Maher navigates the city of Karachi without a map (Published in Urban Planet: Knowledge towards Sustainable Cities Cambridge University Press, 26 Apr 2018)
Mahim Maher has been a journalist and editor in one of the world's megacities, Karachi, for 20 years. Her sense of its urban landscapes was first formed while working with beat reporters and then when she started writing about its infrastructure and systems and questionable governance.
Sound: ambient sound of crows, Karachi
Episode 4:
On the move; about walking in open/free space; between territories... is what I keep thinking but can't arrive at anything as yet...
Artist Christopher Cozier creates a speculative map of observations around language, autonomy and geography as he recalls his walk through Port of Spain. For Cozier, the Caribbean is a fluid space and an ongoing negotiation with shifting narratives and interpretations.
Christopher Cozier is a Trinidadian visual artist whose mediums range from notebook drawings to video installations. His exhibitions include “Infinite Island” at The Brooklyn Museum (2007), “Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic” at Tate Liverpool (2010), “Entanglements” at the Broad Museum, Michigan (2015), “Relational Undercurrents” at MOLAA, LA (2017), and “The Sea is History,” at the Historisk museum, Oslo (2019). Cozier participated in the public program of tenth Berlin Biennial and has exhibited in the fifth and seventh Havana Biennials and the fourteenth Sharjah Biennial (UAE).
Works are currently in the 3rd Industrial Arts Biennial, Croatia and in “one month after being known in that island” at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger. In 2021 the artist will participate in the 11th Liverpool Biennial. Co-director of Alice Yard and a Prince Claus Award laureate, he lives and works in Trinidad.
Sound: Area Code Riddim by Isaac Cozier Sounds from his garden and the Botanical Gardens, Port of Spain Trinidad and Tobago
Episode 5:
Trees, Class, Cycling, and Lawrence Gardens in Lahore
Through a series of situated readings in Lawrence Gardens, Lahore, the artist Saba Khan traces the legacy of colonial, racialised segregation within public space and its legacy in every day lived experiences.
Saba Khan is a visual artist who lives and works in Lahore. Her work varies from painting, sculpture, photography to installation, to curating exhibitions and artists’ residencies. Her recent works are expeditions performed by an all-female artists’ group that studies ecology, impact of development and the role of the female gender in spaces of power. The collective visits monumental and ambitious sites, such as dams and barrages, that have transnational effects on the environment. She also founded Murree Museum Artist Residency, an artist-led initiative in 2014 which has published several artists’ books. Khan teaches at the National College of Arts, Lahore.
Sound: Lawrence Gardens Bagh-e-Jinnah, Lahore
Episode 6:
Navigations through Space and Time: the poems of Fehmida Riaz
Professor Yaqin discusses the work of poet Fehmida Riaz through the lens of an ambulatory walking, sensing the city and the frictions across it.
Amina Yaqin is Associate Professor of World Literatures and Publishing at the University of Exeter. Prior to joining Exeter, she was Reader in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her monograph Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani women's poetry is forthcoming with Anthem Press in 2021. She is co-author with Peter Morey of Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 911(Harvard University Press, 2011) and has co-edited, Contesting Islamophobia: media, politics and culture (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury 2019); Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism: New Directions (Palgrave MacMillan 2018); Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing (Routledge 2012). Her research is interdisciplinary and engages with contemporary contexts of Muslim life as well as the politics of culture in Pakistan where she grew up.
Sound: Akbar Khamisu Khan, alghoza player
Episode 7:
Walking through Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, March 2024
John Batten explores the historical layers of the Tai Ping Shan area of Sheung Wan. He walks us through the site of the city's first compulsory land resumption, Blake Garden; along Po Hing Fong and the scene of Hong Kong's worst landslide; the importance of Pak Sing Temple and the founding of nearby Tung Wah Hospital; and, to Possession Point, where the British planted their flag in 1842 after Hong Kong was ceded to the United Kingdom by China after the first Opium War. He reflects on its portrayal now as one of Hong Kong's 'trendiest' areas.
John Batten is an art critic and writer on Hong Kong art, urban planning and architecture. He ran his own art gallery between 1997 to 2010 and in 2006 co-founded with friends the Central & Western Concern Group that advocates better urban planning and spearheaded multiple campaigns to preserve some of Hong Kong's most important heritage buildings, including Tai Kwun (the former Central Police Station), now a contemporary art centre and heritage site; and PMQ, the precursor of Hong Kong's first generation of public housing, built in 1951 - both located a short walk from Sheung Wan.
Ambient sound:
Taoist priests chanting in Pak Sing Temple, Sheung Wan Basketball and children playing in Blake Garden, Sheung Wan Many birds visit Blake Garden and in spring the distinctive Asian Koel can be heard:
Recording: Ling Pui SzeSound editing: Rebecca Huxley