Walking

Walking
in the city of opportunities

by Sophie Lingg

Based on a joint city walk, students should create their own maps/scores with and for the walking map game app Dérive, focusing on the city, climate, and environment. Perception of the environment with all senses and a reflection of a human-built urban environment, traffic, open spaces, building materials, and nature are central. The goal is to incite thinking about the city, everyday routes, and the environment in a fun, playful way while walking. The developed maps will be added to the Dérive library to be further played in a classroom context.

In her 2019 book “Feminist City”, Leslie Kern asks: “Who shapes the city?” In her words: “Activists have pushed hard for important changes to urban design, policing practices, and services to better meet women’s needs. And yet, a woman will still cross the street at night if a stranger is walking behind her.” (Kern: 12f.)

In a city, different people live their lives, people / each with different interests and ideas – but also substantially different opportunities: Questions of both mobility and gender, as well as of financial resources come to mind rather obviously (Who is moving where? Why are certain demographic groups missing here?), yet so do questions about who the decision-makers are: What do older people or children want? What do wild birds, pigeons, bees, butterflies, worms need – for a good life? How can the various problems – ranging from economic pressure on residents, to racist, misogynistic and sexualized violence to the insufficient measures to fight the climate crisis and the overheating of cities – be addressed and made aware of? And when is it finally going to become illegal to have hundreds of trees cleared under police protection to build a city street? (This happened in Vienna on Feb. 1, 2022, when a protest camp against a huge road construction project was cleared, see https://orf.at/stories/3245819 or https://lobaubleibt.at.)

  • Work steps:
    • The teacher should have basic knowledge of the Dérive app which is not difficult to master.
    • The teacher should engage with “Dérive” as an artistic method, whereby it is important to emphasize here that art-historical representation in relation to urban social exclusions must be viewed critically, too. (Who moves where, when and how through the city?)
    • The teacher should deal with “scores”, instructions for action / guidelines readily used in the art context since Fluxus.
  • Assignments:
    • A1: Field trip to the immediate or a completely different neighborhood of the city. Guided by the teacher, students move through the city (if walking in a large group, perhaps a park would be useful). The teacher leads: the direction, the gazes; What does it smell like? What do you see? What is invisible and yet there? Who is walking in the area? Who is missing? How do people dwell here? How much nature, and how much sealed soil, is there? Are there public restrooms, places to sit or lie down?
    • A2: Next, the students move independently through the city in small groups using “Dérive” and try out the app, becoming aware of what is good/bad.
    • A3: Input: Back at the school, college university et al., they talk about strollology, spatial planning, scores, and “dérive” as an artistic method.
    • A4: Students create their own cards for a deck that is fed into the Dérive app. The themes of the deck of cards should be: climate, environment and city.
    • A5: The game is tested in the urban space.
A score, an instruction for action displayed by the app, is visible. A photograph shows a sunny sidewalk, with cracks in the asphalt. Below the photograph there is the following score: “Can you walk in the shade for more than 5 minutes? Take a photo of a place that desperately needs shadowing.”
Walking in the city of opportunities by Miriam Raggam-Alji

Spaziergang in der Stadt der Möglichkeiten © 2022 by Miriam Raggam-Alji is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Sophie Lingg, works at the Department Art and Education, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Author’s Encouragement
This idea can be realized in different learning contexts and in shorter and longer versions. The Dérive app is relatively easy to use, has many features, and can be useful for other projects as well (field trips to other cities, for example). Students can easily use the app on their own. The app also encourages outdoor exercise – hopefully with fresh air.