Walking inCommon
a model for mobile situated knoledge
Walking inCommon is a series of podcasts that explores the potential of embodied mapping as a way to understand the relationships between place, history, and the body. 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, recording their experience. This project developed from the 2020 pandemic and Khan’s MA at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London. It has evolved into a space for greater conversations and creative collaborations with people across different fields from around the world.
Using the pedagogy of Perween Rahman, the urban scholar and activist shot in Karachi (2013), Khan explores the method of the walking-map, developed to map the informal settlements and urban infrastructure of Orangi Town, Karachi. Her work developed environmental literacy and advocacy within the community and beyond, to eventually support legal claims for land rights. Rahman’s process of embodied mapping enabled her to understand the social and political relations within domestic and gendered spaces. In Rahman’s words, “a map (for us) is like an X-Ray (for the doctor), which tells us the problem so we can resolve it.” Thinking with this model, Walking inCommon and its guidelines, utilises practices of embodied mapping to allow for multiple ways of sensing land and body.
Episode 8:
Batticaloa Justice Walk, 2026
Justice walkers share their daily practice of peaceful resistance that began in 2022 in Batticaloa during Sri Lanka’s mass Aragalaya protests against economic and political crises. The city is embedded with layered histories of colonialism, militarization, war, natural disasters, and long traditions of nonviolent protest.
Voice: Justice Walkers
Episode 7:
Walking through Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, 2024
John Batten
Exploring the historical layers of the Tai Ping Shan area of Sheung Wan, art critic and writer John Batten walks through the neighbourhood, reflecting on its lived experiences and its transformation into one of Hong Kong’s ‘trendiest’ areas.
Recording: Ling Pui SzeSound editing: Rebecca Huxley
Episode 6:
Navigations through Space and Time: the poems of Fehmida Riaz Amina Yaqin
Sound: Lawrence Gardens Bagh-e-Jinnah, Lahore
Episode 5:
Trees, Class, Cycling, and Lawrence Gardens in Lahore Saba Khan
Tracing the legacy of colonial, racialised segregation within public space and its lasting presence in everyday lived experiences, artist Saba Khan performs a series of situated readings in Lawrence Gardens, Lahore.
Sound: Akbar Khamisu Khan, alghoza player
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... Christopher Cozier in
Considering language, autonomy, and geography, artist Christopher Cozier creates a speculative map of observations around language as he recalls his walk through Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. For Cozier, the Caribbean is a fluid space and an ongoing negotiation with shifting narratives and interpretations.
Sound: Area Code Riddim by Isaac Cozier Sounds from his garden and the Botanical Gardens, Port of Spain Trinidad and Tobago
Episode 3:
Walking back over a Karachi line Sustainability, Karachi, and Other Irreconcilables Mahim Maher
Navigating the city of Karachi without a map, journalist Mahim Maher is guided by a deep understanding of the city’s urban landscape informed by more than 20 years of reporting on its infrastructure, systems, and governance.
Sound: ambient sound of crows, Karachi
Episode 2:
Formal - Informal Interface and Public Space Making Asiya Sadiq Polack
Architect Asiya Sadiq Polack discusses ideas of public-space-making, through her current project in Place Liedts, Schaerbeek, Brussels. She shares the ways her training in Karachi and how the pedagogy of Rahman and other scholars has informed her ideas on recognition, recording, and redistribution.
Sound: Freesound, Garuda 1982
Episode 1:
Walking across Disciplines Naiza Khan
Considering the map as an X-Ray of the body, Naiza Khan develops Walking inCommon as a research methodology shaped through a set of creative collaborations across voices in visual practice, academia and activism. Through this gesture, she explores ideas of performative, embodied mapping.
Sound: recordings from Wimbledon Common, London Freesound: Tired Ghosts Piano, Tyballer92