rotatingpractices

1. Take a walk, find a pointless place. It doesn't have to be unpleasant, just pointless.

2. Write down the reasons why you think this place is not valuable. Document it.

3. Spend time there. Notice the details, the other life forms (including people, if there are any), the logic and impact of the place itself. Let the place absorb you. What do you feel?

4. Find a way to make it a place of value - for yourself and others. This can be done at once or in two parts (first for yourself, then for others). What does "valuable" mean to you? How can others benefit from it? Does creating value for others seem possible? Why? For whom might it work more, for whom less?

5. Put together a short entry in a tourist brochure about the place - pictures, urban legends. Because it is, of course, a very special place! Why?

1. AN ABANDONED PARKING LOT, I think it was a parking lot...

2. A HILL-LIKE LANDSCAPE FORMATION UNDER THE BRIDGE AND IN-BETWEEN THE TUNNELS

3. A HIDDEN ALLEY ALONG THE HIGHWAY

Take a walk around the city and capture with your camera all the "Streetart activism" that speaks to you on the topics of fabricated/non-fabricated identity, collective memory, the identity through working body - be it graffiti, stickers or whatever compositions. Think of it as a visit to a contemporary art museum.

Upload them to the Artifactourism website, compose clusters from the material, and add to each cluster a thematic and/or playful title. It can alos be a sidenote/comment or quote.

While walking around the city, think about the texts below. They serve as a tool for you to let go of your identity during the walk.

Activating a place through disappearing human monuments, manifesting at the moment of photo-taking. Photos are enacting as souvenirs or proof of having been there, a tourist’s collection of special moments and valuable experiences one can’t wait to share with their friends and family at home.

I entered the place through an abandoned and rustic gateway and walked around, placing my steps carefully and mindfully, trying to absorb the escape that the place embodies with my whole body. It offers a melancholic shelter to solitary tourists seeking to experience non-viral destinations that mirror their abandoned soul. Being next to a busy street, it perfectly capures the experience of "midding" (dictionary of obscure sorrows) 'feeling the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it (...), the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be.'

It is a beautiful non-place, formed as a result of the bridge and the tunnels first built in 1936. It is an in-between place, a non-inhabited hill-park, a historic residue of functional architecture that must be experienced. Green spots in the city must be celebrated and lived. Therefore, I returned the next day with a book and spent there a lovely morning reading.

I look at these pruned and well-kept bushes, gardens, homes. And fanthasize of being domesticated.

I was looking for comfort and wellbeing, and semi-aggressively I just seemed to be able to provide it for myself. I sucked it out of the city like the last drop
of a juicebox from children's straw drink.

This gothic graveyard brings one close to the experience of '"ringlorn" (dictionary of obscure sorrows)- the feeling of disappointment in the modern world as it doesn't feel as epic as the one depicted in old stories and folktales—a place of tragedy and transcendence, of oaths and omens and fates. In the graveyard, you can experience the life's capacity to transform. You can imagine graveyards creating cosmic links between all the people who have ever been there and who will be there in the future, but also links between graveyards around the world, creating a cosmic fabric of communication. Walk slowly in any graveyard close to you, feel your hands becoming heavy and gravitated towards the ground, filling with force from your ancestors. You will be connected to them even when they are buried to another graveyard, in another country, on the other side of the world.

A bridge, traditionally a functional construction, can offer other activities besides crossing it. Have you ever taken an hour to cross a bridge while contemplating on it's history? The Hasselt Kempische Bridge was built in 1936 and was destructed several times eversince. In 1938 it experienced an unfortunate and disastrous collapse. The emergecy bridge which was built to substitute it was blown up in May 1940 to prevent it from falling into German hands. Today, among other things, one can spend time there exploring the contemporary expression of street art while enjoying the view to the Albert Canale.

If you are the kind of tourist interested in other perspectives, this is a spot for you! Here you can marvel the empty side of big highway commercials and find out where the late night fireworks' explosions are coming from - we can all hear them, but rarely see them.

1. Write down three sentences finishing the sentence - "I want ...", get ready to leave the house and take the paper with you.

2. Before you leave the front door, stand with two feet on the ground, close your eyes and feel your body, how you perceive your body, whether it is tired, heavy, whether it is tight or maybe it is light instead.

3. Within two hours, walk around in the direction your gut feeling takes you or jump on a bus that will take you out of a familiar area.

4. Stop in places that interest you

- to physically feel the place for a while
- take notes
- what this place wants you to do, think about it and perhaps do it
- if you can, document your activity
- if you notice interesting objects in this place, make notes and take a picture of it
- if you feel a good connection with one of the places you visit, take out your paper from your pocket that you wrote at home and read it out loud to the place where you are
- write down the name of the place, its coordinates or its street name.
- collect at least 2-4 places like this

5. At home, use the Internet to find out even more about the history of the visited places.

6.Review your notes and think about how the feelings and actions you collected could be correlated with the history of the place.Can you find the connections? Which?

ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴄᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɢʀᴀɴᴛꜱ ꜱᴘᴀᴄᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ʜᴇɪɢʜᴛᴇɴᴇᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴜɴᴄᴏᴠᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴄᴏꜱᴍᴏʟᴏɢɪᴄᴀʟ ꜱʏɴᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄɪᴛʏ.

6. A GATE CLOSE TO THE TUNNELS UNDER THE BRIDGE

This otherwise unnoticable gateway can be visited to distance oneself from the multi-directionality of the streets. Want to feel as a painting in a museum, detached from the chaos of traffic? Here you can frame any daily activity from simply standing to listening and responding to vocal messages into a special act deserving its own time and place.

THE PRACTICE OF WANDERING AROUND: IMAGINATIVE INHABITING OF OTHER PLACES - THE ELSEWHERE AND OTHERWISE

A practice using the help of different media (audio, visual, textual).

1. Choose a place where you would like to be and the medium through which you wish to connect. Place is a broad concept here, it can be temporal or spatial, real or fictional. You could re-visit a memory or go to a place that you have always wanted to go. Perhaps even explore utopias.

2. For 15 minutes, by connecting with the chosen medium, allow that place to enter into your body and allow yourself to wander around. You can close your eyes. How does your body react?

3. You can repeat the practice, changing the medium or the place you wander off to.

4. After practicing reflect on: what did you bring with you, if you did, and what did you leave behind. Do you notice other moments in your daily life, when you drift off, are not fully present?

LOCATION: Bristolian Cafe, Bristol
POSITION: eyes closed, sitting
PRACTICE: To go elsewhere in your past memory - Porto, Sylvia's apartment

I went elsewhere using my own past memory. I still remember that apartment in Porto I visited, it was easy to enter, yet it was not easy to stay there. In the beginning, I was walking around the living room, looking at the decorations on the wall and floor and the wall tiles, which are specifically inherent to Portuguese people. The room was rather dim and it was hard to see bright colours. I was trying to see my friend Sylvia. My physical body was at the cafe shop in Bristol, people were talking, the waitress was using a coffee machine to make milk froth and then someone called the cafe shop and totally pulled me out from my elsewhere.

LOCATION: Park near Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol
POSITION: eyes closed, upright, moving
PRACTICE: To go elsewhere using a photo of the past in Gaza Strip.

The second time I went elsewhere, I was using a photo. It was a photo of a Palestinian family eating together outdoors, possibly in the 60s. They were eating rice and chicken dish fattah. The Family looked happy and easygoing. First, I looked at the photo carefully and then chose a character from the photo I tried to be. I thought it would be easier to enter into this situation when I also kept that chosen person's position and started eating the dish. I closed my eyes and repeated the movement of eating the rice, visualising the people on my right and left, then I also started visualising what I saw in front of me. I totally reconnected from my own body and became that person's body there - I was elsewhere. I felt ease and cheerfulness. Until dog sniffing took me back to my own physical body and reality. I am scared of dogs. I chose not to open my eyes, therefore my fear transformed into feeling the fear in Gaza where I still was. I started seeing dead bodies and bombing next to me. The happy situation turned into grey, misty chaos. I was actually scared. Finally, the dog left and I slowly came back to my reality.

Here in this green environment, bursting with business opportunities and warm-hearted welcoming inhabitants you will certainly feel at home soon.
What we offer is a balance between work and play. In other words: quality of life.

HASSELT
walk on the 25.10.2023

I was walking in Hasselt and noticed a lot of empty energy drink bottles on the ground. Kong Energy - Urban Classic Wild Power seems to be particularly popular. I thought of death. I walked on rather aimlessly and without much interest in my surroundings. Suddenly I came to the gate of the cemetery. I stepped inside and felt expected. I walked around, fascinated, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, but feeling calm. I stood for a long time in front of an old tree. Afterwards, I walked through the shop and thought about buying an energy drink but I didn't, because I'm afraid my teeth will fall out if I drink too much sugary drinks.

ENERGY AT IT'S FINAL RESTING PLACE

HASSELT
walk on the 26.10.2023

Today there was a thick fog outside. I spotted a few isolated flowers out of context. The fog prevented me from seeing much. I cried and left a voicemail for a friend.

HASSELT
walk on the 27.10.2023

I stepped out of the door and the first thing I noticed was the textures of the asphalt. The road that supports my steps feels solid and unchanging over time. Stone, after all. I set my steps into the museum. There, too, old stones were on display. I felt my body disappearing and hollow. I caught some random reflections as evidence of my presence in the room.

Im somehere else because I can. Because it is my private space in public. Because its' a way to connect to myself and disconnect from other. It is sacred.Through that mental space I am constantly reminding myself through my memories and dreams who I am in this context and environment at the very moment. In this way I sometimes feel I am a hobby-escapist.

ACT ONE: THE BENCH

I had been tired. Really tired. And soon I discovered that my walk directed me more and more away from human lifeforms, towards trees, benches, bugs, plants, birds and hiding places.

First - a bench. MY bench. I had visited it before, but today I understood that I really do feel connected to it. To its damp wood, its broken left side, to the graffiti that covers not only the bench and the trashcan, but also the nearest tree. The smell on decomposing leaves. Knowing that the river is just there, but you just can't see it. The last time on this bench I tried the practice of being elsewhere, decomposing myself. This time I am fully here, and letting the leaves do the decomposing - and suddenly feeling very very happy.

ACT TWO: THE TREE

I have been walking, and now I turn away from the path, squeezing myself through a small opening between the bushes. I discover myself in a park, this side of it looks quite abandoned, or is it just the aftermath of autumn gardening works...? I sit on another bench, not nearly as charismatic as the one I have already fallen in love with. But then I notice a tree opposite of me, bright and elegant. A branch from a hedge touches it as leaning in for a hug. I decide to finish what the hedge has started. We spend a few moments together. It's a common hazel, as I translate from the information plate - and dedicated to Brigitte Bardot??

Later I use Google Translate and find out that the text did not educate the strollers about the botanical tree, but instead about the astrology sign... I decide to keep believing that Brigitte Bardot herself planted the tree.

AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE, TOWARDS THE DECOMPOSING LEAVES

ACT THREE: THE PERFECT HIDEAWAY

I am intrigued and secretly very happy that someone - whoever that was - has organized a table and a bench under a weeping willow. The perfect hiding place. I sit there for a bit, peeping the world between the soft downward branches framing my view. Nothing could scare or hurt me in this little private cave. I can hide and fade away, if I wanted to.

I could come here alone or with friends. I could have a picnic or a little cigarette, as the trashcan is just next to the bench. Convenient, cozy, safe. A make-believe mini-home away from home.

Activating devalued urban space by spending time in there, observing the space and wondering and dreaming about what could be there.

A large piece of land, which probably belongs to the Bristol city council and which probably had some houses on it before, but now it is all empty. The land is surrounded by gates all around, just in one place where was the Primary School teacher's car park, it was possible to crawl in. Nature is really making its change there and between the pavements it is blooming, there are lots of different types of plants and flowers and some lovely puddles. On one side it has possibly another social house where perhaps some children live because there were lots of toys thrown onto the pointless land. In Google Maps, I found out, that when the picture was taken of that land, it had a circus tent there. Now it makes sense as next to the area is a church which is also a circus school, yet it does not make sense to find the purpose of the space only from time to time. I can imagine there could be beautiful water sculptures or fountains with lots of chilling and sitting areas, flower beds, vegetable gardens and shelter for bad weather. It could be a space where people come together.

2. BETWEEN EMPTY FRAME

It is just an empty frame at the park. No commercials or anything. We were standing under this frame with my boyfriend facing each other. We thought it could be a couples therapy meeting point.

3. INSIDE OF FLOWER BED WALL

empty concrete field surrounded with plants, filled with rainwater between the new apartment houses.
Going to fictional world of me being a prime minister who is allowed to give one-liners to other world leaders. Someone who has the superpower to know the right from wrong and is allowed to publicly communicate that. Who parties and hangs out with AOC and Žižek.

BEING ELSEWHERE I

LOCATION: a bench next to a bike lane/ footpath near the river

ELSEWHERE: dissolving

When answering Kadri's questions, I realized that for me being elsewhere means dissolving into nothingness, not being in another place. Therefore I guided myself into the practice in the way I usually am elsewhere. It only concerned me not to look like the passerby should worry about me.

BEING ELSEWHERE III

LOCATION: deck chair near the canal

ELSEWHERE: my childhood home

This time I decided to choose a place of strong personal connection, just to be able to stay elsewhere for longer than a few minutes. I entered through physical sensations - the smell of my sunbathing blanket and the soil under me, the touch of grass under my feet. The uncomfortable position of my physical body made it tricky to find ways of moving around this elsewhere and truly believing it, but I could rely mostly on my senses. So I smelled and touched, walked in the garden and in the house, and could spend there much longer time than in New York.

BEING ELSEWHERE II

LOCATION: The entrance of a university (?)

ELSEWHERE: New York

I tried to choose an existing place that would be the opposite of my physical location, but also somehow tied to it. I saw some teens walking by and decided to choose the place where every teen in a small town watching fun series secretly wishes to be. No offence, Hasselt, surely teens in Brussels feel the same way!
Going to the place was difficult, as I have no connection to New York and visiting it has never been my dream. I was distracted by the pure boredom that I felt. The only interesting thing was noticing how my body tensed up and was ready to react to the hustle and bustle of the NY streets.

BEING ELSEWHERE IV

LOCATION: hiding from the rain under a gateway

ELSEWHERE: a kitchen in a book

Testing entering a fictional elsewhere. I think I need strong emotions for being able to stay elsewhere as a location, so I chose a book which has deeply disturbed me. The room I visited is a kitchen where a middle-aged woman is asking questions about her past from her aunt who raised her after WWII. The aunt is already old and living in horrible conditions, she is fragile and pitiful. Yet, she has manipulated people all of her life, hiding the truths and plotting how to gain from the others. Is she still manipulating? Or does she even distinguish her truths from her lies anymore? The protagonist is looking at the lady with love and disgust. So did I, in that room. I focused first on that person, and then on the details in the room, and, on behalf of the protagonist, asked her: "Did you ever even love me?"

ON NOT BEING ELSEWHERE

LOCATION: a bar in Hasselt

ELSEWHERE: -

I really wanted to soak in every sound, smell, the ways people talk to each other. I really did not want to be anywhere else but here, fully. So I asked myself: why be elsewhere in a place where you actually want to be? Maybe you'd like to escape one unpleasant aspect of it. Or if you know that you can always come back. Or if you are overstimulated - you love being in this situation, but you cannot handle it and need a brief break. So I thought, and stayed, still - here.