The Old Town to the Quay - Terminalia Festival 2022

Thankfully, this year's Terminalia Festival fell on a day that was blessed with bright sunshine, though the wind was still cool and sharp.

Previous walks on Terminalia have been: In 2019 a Saigon Citadel Walk and in 2020, a Saigon Canal Walk.

This one-day Festival of Psychogeography has been held every year on the 23rd of February since 2011 and brings together individuals and groups who mark the Festival of Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries and landmarks.

Nina and I were in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, UK to celebrate Terminalia by walking from the The Old Town to the Quay, via the Priory Church and we started at the top of Market Place at 11:00am promptly.

Originally the Old Town and the Quay were two separate locations, with the Old Town (Burlington) being the main area with the Quay forming the local port. More recently the two have merged to become the modern town of Bridlington.

A view through Westgate Park to The Avenue

Intriguingly named road

The official start of the walk

A view looking down Market Place in the Old Town, 

Burlington as it used to be known

Pillory (replica), first placed placed here in 1636

Stocks (replica), originals also c.1636

Unintentional Christo-influenced installation

Southern Hemisphere, bathed in sunlight

Beautifully proportioned shop-fronts

(Virtual) Shop-keeper waiting for customers

Unintentional Morandi-influenced shop window-display

Bust of John Sawdon, Lord Mayor of Bridlington 1905-08

Disused drinking fountain

Bayle Gate, original gateway to the Priory.

The Church Green, Priory Church beyond

Remains of the old fencing around the Church Green

Christmas decorations, surviving into February

St. John's Burlington, Grade II listed Methodist Church

Surviving Cast-Iron Canopy on Quay Road

The arrival / departure of the train on the single line 

temporarily separates the Quay from the Old Town

Bridlington Centotaph

Repaired shrapnel damage from the Second World War

Even in February it is easy to find a bucket and spade for the beach

Plenty of multi-coloured sugar available

Modest monument to T. E. Lawrence,

unfortunately the gnomon is now missing

The Royal Yorkshire Yacht Club HQ appears ready to set sail

A view of the harbour with 'The Anchorman', 2015 

keeping watch (Sculpture by Ronald Falck)

This year's walk for Terminalia 2022 has been very enjoyable and we were very lucky with the weather. Who knows where next year's walk will be? We look forward to it.

'Experience Mapping' at 4WCoP 2021

The annual Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography was held this year on Saturday 4th and 5th September 2021. For this event Dr. Nina Yiu and I proposed a project we called 'Experience Mapping' that aimed to record the collective experience of participating in the congress. 

Maps are often depictions of actual locations, a record of the activities of a person or group of people, or even directions enabling someone to arrive at an intended location.

Rather than creating a map of the actual locations around Huddersfield University and its environs, we wanted to collate the experiences of different participants during the weekend, wherever they were, and combine them into a virtual map that could represent the collective experience of participants of the 'Experience Mapping' project. 

This approach required us to invite participants to take photographs of their activities sometime during the weekend of the congress and to send them to Nina and I, along with a note of the time the photograph was taken and a comment about the feeling at the time or a description of the environment. 

These photographs would then be transformed into drawn images and subsequently incorporated into a map that integrated the disparate elements into a seemingly logical map.

Nina and I presented the project concept on Saturday 4th September at 10:00am, and a recording of the presentation can be viewed below (or viewed at https://youtu.be/Ead6fwzgYY8)

Project presentation at 4WCoP 2021, 4th September 2021

Five people eventually responded to the open call by submitting photographs: Elspeth Billie Penfold, Sonia Overall, Aled Singleton, Steve Goldman, and Time Chapman. In total, we had twelve photographs to work with.

The first stage was to transform the photographs into graphic images by hand. As this process took some time, it allowed us gain a 'feeling' for the image and what was being captured, almost as if we were there ourselves, quite a lyrical approach we discovered. These days most of us are under pressure from deadlines and it is not often that we find ourselves with the luxury of patience. 

Being patient is sometimes what is required and in this project it was essential. The entire process was also unexpectedly delayed when fate intervened, and an unexpected family bereavement brought the process to a halt. It was several months before we were able to establish the correct frame of mind to retrace the previous thought processes.

As the images were created one-by-one, they were juxtaposed each time and a story gradually began to reveal itself as the images accumulated, and this emerging story became the guideline we used when composing the final map.

The 'Experience Mapping' project was a pilot project as it was the first time that it had been tried. There was inevitably a learning curve to negotiate within the process. In future, it is hoped, more complex maps would be attempted, if the opportunity arose.

Below are the twelve photographs used as the inspiration for the map, the twelve images transformed into hand-drawn images, and finally a screen-capture of the resolved map.

The twelve photographs submitted to the project

The twelve drawings created in response to the photographs

The final map as an A3 pdf

A recording of the congress final plenary session was made and can be viewed here, or below:

 

4th World Congress of Psychogeography, 2020

For the second year running I submitted a proposal to participate in the 4th World Congress of Psychogeography, which is usually held at a number of venues in West Yorkshire centered around Huddersfield University. 

 

This year, due to the situation resulting from the COVID-19 epidemic, a version of the congress was organized in which the majority of events would be conducted and participated in online. A map of a virtual town centre was created with each location linking to the various content.

My accepted proposal was to broadcast a recording of my performance ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’ which had been recorded on the Hickson Steps, Sydney, Australia. My work was found by clicking on the town University icon and the details were listed towards the bottom of the page along with a note to say that the performance was accessible at any time during the conference.

 

Unfortunately, however, my contribution was not listed on the main congress programme which made me worry that this would greatly limit the number of visitors to my linked performance. In fact the viewings recorded in the analytics of my Youtube Channel were disappointingly low.

I later responded to a call to participate in a post-conference interview via Zoom and spent around 30 minutes discussing the conference and the story behind my own work. 

 

As many of the conference events were online this year, I was fortunate to be able to see much more of the content than I had last year. The range of events and activities, from recorded performances, films, live-stream discussions was impressive and especially so given the difficulty of arranging the conference under the current circumstances. The organisers did a magnificent job.

As I shared during the interview, it is my wish that in the future I will be able to make the journey across from Asia in future years to attend the conference in person.

The Congress website can be found here.

Virtual Town Map

Conference Programme

A recording of the live-stream performance can be viewed here on my YouTube Channel.

A playlist of ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’ performances can be viewed here.

QR Link to Recorded Performance of 

'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', 

Hickson Steps, Sydney, Australia.

Activities accessible within the 'University' area, Part 1

Activities accessible within the 'University' area, Part 2

Recording of the performance at the Hickson Steps, Sydney, Australia

4th World Congress of Psychogeography, 2019

The 4th World Congress of Psychogeography was held on the first weekend in September 2019 at the following venues in West Yorkshire: Huddersfield on Friday 6th, Dewsbury on Saturday 7th and Marsden on Sunday 8th.

I have never classed myself as a true psychogeographer but it has occurred to me that many of the activities associated with psychogeography do have connections to the methods I have been drawn to in my performance work and, with walking as a primary element in my work, it seems to be the closest approach that has been defined as an area of study.

With this in mind I have been actively seeking opportunities for me to present my work whenever such appropriate opportunities arise. The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography was immediately attractive to me for a couple of reasons. First, the venues were located in my home county of Yorkshire in the UK, and secondly I noticed that a number of notable figures within the field of psychogeography were either presenting work or initiating events and activities.

I secured a time-slot between 12:00-12:30pm on Friday 6th September to present a live-stream performance to an assembled audience of around 60 people who had gathered in the Oastler Building of Huddersfield University. This was an opportunity for me to enact a new episode of my on-going saga 'No holiday', this time conducted in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam, on the wide 'walking street' Nguyễn Huệ.

Originally the Kinh Lon canal that allowed goods to be brought from the Saigon River, into the heart of the city, it was renamed the Charter Canal from around 1861. The canal was subsequently filled in in 1887 and turned into a boulevard in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The boulevard grew increasingly busy until April 2015, when it was converted into a pedestrian street.

An introduction was made to the assembled audience at Huddersfield University before the live-stream broadcast commenced and I began my walk.

Beginning at 6:00pm (Vietnam time) my walk took me down the northwestern edge of the street, walking towards the river until I reached the busy Đường Tôn Đức Thắng road at which point I turned and made my way up the centre of Nguyễn Huệ, past the joggers, the students, young couples, hawkers, tourists and street performers.

During the walk dusk arrived and the lighting on the street changed dramatically. Early in the walk it began raining but luckily despite the forecast of heavy rain, it lifted and allowed me to continue walking unencumbered by the umbrella.

The performance went well and, according to the organisers, was well received back in the UK. I always hope that audiences can relax, suspend their expectations and enjoy the meditative walk with me, wherever I happen to be in the world.

It was a great honour for me to be a participant of the Congress and I thank the organisers for allowing me to showcase my work in this way.

The Congress website can be found here.

The full conference programme can be viewed here.

A recording of the live-stream performance can be viewed here on my YouTube Channel.

A full playlist of 'No holiday' performances can be viewed here.

One-page Congress Programme

Recording of live-stream performance