September 9th, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA
LED BY Eduardo Cachucho and babak Fakhamzadeh in collaboration with Minoosh Zomorodinia and Astrid Kaemmerling
The Walk Discourse kicked-off it’s first season by participating in Dérive Day 2017 collaborating with Babak Fakhamzadeh and Eduardo Chachuco who created Derive App. Dérive Day 2017 tied in with the 4th World Congress on Psychogeography, hosted by the University of Huddersfield at Heritage Quay. On 9 September 2017, we explored San Francisco city with others around the world through randomly generated and synchronised tasks that are simultaneously drawn whether you’re in Rio or Rome, Kampala, Kuala Lumpur or San Francisco. Dérive app is created as a simple but engaging platform that allows users to explore their urban spaces in a carefree and casual way. It takes the ideals of the Situationists and merges it with digital means to create a tool that would imply an exploration of urban space in a random and unplanned way as a game. Too often in urban centers we are controlled by our day to day activities thus closing off urban experiences that exist around us. Dérive app was created to try to nudge those people who are in this repetitive cycle to allow the suggestions and subjectivities of others to enter into their urban existences. For this walk participants had to download the app and navigate the city for 1 1/2 hours alone or in groups of 2 while responding to app generated walking tasks which purposefully made participants lose track of their passageways as they navigated the city. The routes were documented though sound, photography and video footage which were shared and exchanged at the end of the walkshop.
Eduardo Chachuco is an artist and architect based in Johannesburg. He is interested in how national, and trans-national, infrastructural developments can have long lasting rippling effects from their implementation. His first solo exhibition, Looking Glass: Johannesburg 2012 and 1886-1896, was presented in 2012 at GoetheonMain, Johannesburg. His works act as interventions that reinforce or put into question the idea that infrastructural developments can have long lasting, rippling, effects. Simultaneously his interest in performance and video work allow another entry-point into similar research material and works. Another area of interest lies in the merging of new technologies with established theories and concepts as well as the possibilities of emphasising/breaking down their relevance through this juxtaposition.
Babak Fakhamzadeh was working in ICT4D before it had a name, never really left it, and knows how to throw together a pretty mean combination of your favourite collection of programming languages. He brought photomarathons to Africa and won the Highway Africa new media award with Ismail Farouk. Work of his was selected to represent Uganda at the World Summit Award, twice. In 2016, together with Agência Pública, he won, and was a runner up for, the Prêmio Jornalístico Vladimir Herzog de Anistia e Direitos Humanos. Twice, he made it to the Guinness book of records. He created what was probably the first mobile phone based city tour in 2004 as well as what probably was the first QR-code assisted smartphone-based city tour in 2009.DETAILS
Location: The Plaza at Apple Union Square, 300 Post Street, San Francisco, CA
Start Time: 2pm
Duration: approx. 2 hours
Equipment: Journal, notebook, camera or related recording devices
Photography by Minoosh Zomorodinia and Astrid Kaemmerling
