Test Drive – Essex University

Walking on Campus
Commissioned by the Art Exchange and
ESCALA (Essex Collection of Art from Latin America)

To coincide with the exhibition Margins: Walking Between Worlds, the Art Exchange has commissioned me to produce a new work for the University Colchester Campus.

During December 2011 I will be collecting Instructions for a Walk from staff, students and regular visitors at the Campus.

On 3rd February 2012 I will Test Drive the walks recommended, and comment upon their merits for the benefit of all Campus walkers. Everybody is welcome to join me on the Test Drive walks, and a time table will be available closer to the date.

All recommended walks will be compiled into a guide, annotated and illustrated by myself. The guide will be available as a hard-copy from ESCALA and downloadable from the new ESCALA website.

This work is in line with my interest in creating shared resources and communal knowledge with groups of people, built from partial, individual and smaller knowledges on a given subject.

In response to the invitation by Art Exchange to propose a walking event for communities at Essex University, I was inspired by the many different forms of walking that are already present in Campus. From the purposeful and practical daily routes of postmen and cleaners, to the many different research projects and social activities organised by staff and students that involve walking in and around the Campus, there is already much walking going on. As an outsider, I felt it would be more pertinent to make good use of this existing expertise, and lent myself to testing the suitability of these modes of walking for the novice.

Get involved (If you are familiar with the Colchester Campus)

Recommend a walk

Give your walk a title, a starting and ending place, and approximate duration.

Walks can be of any duration, but shorter ones will be more suitable for Test Driving them. However, all walks, regardless of duration, will be considered.

Please submit your proposed walk, including any instructions for a person who is not familiar with the Campus, to be able to do the walk on their own.

Walks can be of any nature: practical, conceptual, focused on a particular topic or even impossible to perform. If relevant, please specify instructions for the walk, such as suggested attire, form of documentation, particular things to notice or activities to carry out.

Please note that your submission of walking instructions will be compiled into a work that will be freely available to the public. I would like to credit the author of each walking instruction, but if you want to remain anonymous, that’s fine too.

Please send your proposed walk to arts@essex.ac.uk, or drop it in/send it to
the Arts on 5 Office, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ.

Help Test Drive the walks

A timetable of the walks that I will be testing on Friday 3rd February will be available closer to the date from the ESCALA website and on posters around campus. Please feel free to join me on any of the Test Drive walks. Just come on time to the location specified in the schedule.

Organise your own Test Drive

After the event, a guide of all walks will be available to download from the ESCALA website. You might want to Test Drive some or all the walks yourself, or organise group Test Drives with your friends, colleagues or those you always wanted to meet but never had a silly
enough excuse.