walks on water
2 - 9 August 2007, Stromereien festival, Tanzhaus Zürich
performance presentation 9 August 19:00, Tanzhaus Zurich
Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills, which have their rise in the sources of thought, burst forth and fertilize my brain.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal entry, 19 August 1851.
Project Description
We will spend 24 hours over the ten days of the festival walking along the banks of the Limmat attempting to walk on water and bring the two banks together by using GPS recordings of their paths. The technique we will use relies on a usually unwanted inaccuracy inherent in GPS location. If a path is reiterated many times, the lines recorded on the GPS spread due to the inaccuracy of the GPS system.
Our task is to walk on all the possible routes near the river between the Dammsteg and Kornhausbrücke for 4 hours a day over six days coinciding with the festival hours.
Like debris in the water, we will only be able to move when someone is accompanying us, carrying us along with conversation. If no-one is with us, we shall remain standing or sitting on anglers stools, waiting for company, like pedestrian hitch-hikers. Dressed like explorers, each of us will have a hand-held GPS unit, an angling stool, notebook and a sign to attract attention when waiting.
We will not be walking together during the performance so that we cover more ground and make more tracks, being alone will also allow us to start a conversation with other people more easily.
One of the things that we are particularly interested in asking people about is a message that they might have for the Limmat as if the river had a memory and could store these messages for future generations to find. At the end of the six days we will make a short presentation of the collected GPS tracks and messages and anecdotes from our walks.
Each evening, the accumulated GPS tracks will be shown in the festival bar and a performance presentation will be given on the last evening of the festival.