Artspace

Larissa Hjorth

Identifies as: Female

Language/Language group: English

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to the participants who shared their works and Adelina Onicas

Throughout the COVID-19 shutdown, for many it has been walks and feetings (walking meetings) through their neighbourhoods that has helped to keep them sane. The act of walking curates our everyday rhythm into what can be described as ‘sensemaking’, the process of assigning meaning to collective experiences. My action invited audiences to tell a story of these collective experiences through feetings, sanity walks and wayfaring (the act of travelling on foot) to help us make sense of what, at times, appears to be a senseless world.

Over the past three weeks, I invited audiences to share maps of their wayfaring, feetings and sanity walks. These maps include drawings, photos, and sketches that reflect each contributors journey and tell the story of how we have been making sense of the world through wayfaring.

Artist bio

Larissa Hjorth’s work coalesces ethnographic methods to reflect upon everyday phenomena, especially the social dimensions of digital media. Her work has explored play in the city, performative interventions of technological surveillance, understanding grief through media, and creative social media deployment for audience engagement. Much of her work is collaborative and cross-cultural in nature.

As director of the Design & Creative Practice (DCP) research platform at RMIT University, Hjorth facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations with industry partners (see http://dcp-ecp.com). She has led 20 national and international research projects in locations such as Japan, South Korea, China and Australia. Hjorth has also worked extensively with how mobile media is used for grief, loss and recovery including the Fukushima disaster of 2011. She has published over 100 publications — recent publications include Haunting Hands (with Cumiskey, Oxford Uni Press), Understanding Social Media (with Hinton, 2nd Edition, Sage), Creative Practice Ethnographies (with Harris, Jungnickel and Coombs, Rowman & Little) and Ambient Play (with Richardson, MIT Press).

27.07.2020

During COVID19 physical distancing restrictions, the home was digitally recalibrated into a site for everything — work, school and life. In this domestic compression, the role of walking as a process of sensemaking became key. Walking curates our everyday rhythms into a different type of narration — a story of wayfaring. Feetings (walking meetings), sanity walks and other types of wayfaring helped us make sense of what at times appears to be a senseless world.

This project is an ode to the art of feetings and wayfaring that are ephemeral monuments to our individual and collective sensemaking during COVID19. We had an open call for wayfaring. Here are some examples of the crowdsourced sense mapping.

. . .

Sensemaking by Jesper

28.07.2020

The Art of Contemporary Sensemaking | During COVID-19 physical distancing restrictions, the home has been digitally recalibrated into a site for everything — work, school and life. In this domestic compression, the role of walking as a process of sensemaking has become key. Walking curates our everyday rhythms into a different type of narration — a story of wayfaring. Feetings (walking meetings), sanity walks and other types of wayfaring are helping us make sense of what at times appears to be a senseless world.

These are some of the different ways we have been making sense of the world through wayfaring.

. . .

Confinement-Scotch (A critical hopscotch, part of [mapscotch] series) by Mary Flanagan @critical.play

Draw a circle
To stay away from anyone
In confinement

Over the last fifteen years Flanagan has been creating [mapscotch]: small hopscotch games that engage with difficult or poetic topics.

Examples see:
https://studio.maryflanagan.com/mapscotch-bombscotch

29.07.2020

Sensemaking by Gemma Walsh @gemma_walsh, ‘Jogged 2k with a mask on, would not recommend’, 2020. This picture is a Strava image from quarantine exercising.

Sensemaking by Alice Crawford @somethingratherthannothing

30.07.2020

Sensemaking by Zorica Purlija @zorica_purlija, ‘Waiting to get in while social distancing’.

Sensemaking by Melinda Young @unnaturaljeweller, ‘Sand after a storm at Thirroul beach, 24 May 2020’.