HOMEWALK | code 4053

Intervention Installation

2.3 Mile, 32 Streets, 60 Homes and Helium Balloons

London 2009

• DESCRIPTION

  a social art project that developed during my artist residency as part of 1 mile2 Waltham Forest in London 2009.

   

  This idea comes from my experience of the contrast in private residential space between living in Shanghai and walking around the 1 square mile area in Leytonstone, East London.

   

  I carefully drew a circle with a circumference of 2.3 miles, which goes through as many of the typical Victorian terraced houses as possible.

   

  I went to people's houses and sought permission from residents to visualize this 'ring' with a series of colourful helium balloons that are to be 'planted' or 'grow' out of these centurial old silent chimneys. I want to knock on people's doors, walk through their corridor to their living room and come out into their garden, climb over the fence into the garden next door and go into their neighbour's home, come out of their door back onto the street and carry on the journey to complete this circle. The artwork will be generated through this 'clockwise' walk by collecting people's reactions, conversations, impressions, objects, photographs and recordings into a book, which has too much personal details and information to be published.

   

  I used the circle for its strong visual symbolism and also its looping property, like its function in physics - the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), to connect people's living space through my arbitrary knocking on doors, visiting and walking, which enables the artist to discover and explore the community's culture, aesthetic and biodiversity. I define this work as a psychogeographical, mood-based and time specific social intervention art project.