Gemma Kerr

This page shows the documentation of my practice in Deptford in South East London. Deptford has been a site of change over the past decade, with social housing and community spaces being eroded, and new housing developments incoming.

In this project I explored how the values of diversity and multiculturalism have been co-opted in a way that excludes existing residents, as recent changes have raised questions of how new communities are invested in the local area, as communal and green spaces have been eroded.

I met with participants weekly over six weeks, using performance, mapping and walking exercises to explore the spatial practice and politics of the area, investigating Deptford as a site of change and ‘regeneration’.

These following exercises were worked through over six weeks; material from these exercises fedinto the final performance walks, which were explored in more detail.

A mirroring exercise, where one person is led by another, as though ‘transfixed’ by the palm of their hand. This exercise works as both a form of ‘de-mechanisation’ (a process of de-habituating our responses to the world in order to engage more fully with what is happening around us)and as a way to explore power, where one person leads and the other follows, but where the relationship must be based on trust and allyship or it breaks down.

On a map of the local area I asked participants to mark places that have a particular meaning or significance. These can be personal, ‘inconsequential’ places, the idea is rather than discuss the already well known sights of an area, this exercise highlights peoples’ individual connections with a place. Inthe past when I have used this exercise, it has often been for a directed or more strategic creative process, to form a narrative or to generate a piece of performance.

‘Space bingo’ is an exercise in exploring spatial justice created by the Design Studio for Social Intervention, an ‘artistic research and development outfit for the improvement of civil society and everyday life’ based in Boston (Bailey et al.,2012). The exercise encourages participants to look at familiar spaces in new ways, and to begin to talk about space. The game is based around a bingo card, labelled with different kinds of space in each square. I gave participants a bingo card at the end of one of our workshops and asked them to take photos around Deptford that they felt correlated with the squares. Our squares were labelled Hopeful space, Public space as Private space, Hangout space, Enclosed space, Space in identity crisis, Space to breathe, Sacred space, Contested space, Temporary space, Space of possibility, Stressed space, Space for the desired public, Appropriated space, Space in decline, Free space, Cut-up space, Dangerous space, Sexy space, Sanitised space, Gendered space, Corporate space.

I have been interested in the connections between performance practices of walking, and the use of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed arsenal of exercises. Boal’s belief that the human body is a unity: a bodily movement is a thought, and a thought expresses itself through the body. In a similar way the practice of walking produces an image, the physical reality of a body in space. I was curious about exploring exercises that didn’t rely on writing or even necessarily on discussion to produce a response.

In 'image of the hours' participants are led through the hours of the day, and asked to mime the actions they would be doing at that time. It is an individual exercise, but participants might at times join in an activity with another participant or interact with them. The objective is to reflect on your own routines and habitual actions, and it can often provoke a reflective or emotional response.

Going in Circles is an exercise in circumambulation devised by Alexander ‘Twig’ Champion, featured in Ways toWander, inviting participants to walk in ever decreasing circles around an object that is ‘revered or something you wish to investigate (Qualmann and Hind, 2015b)’.

Leading up to the creation of the audio walks which formed the largest ‘output’ of the project, the participants and I tried sensory walks as a starting point for an exploration I was interested in pursuing, of the RSVP cycles developed by Lawrence and Anna Halprin. Lawrence Halprin was a landscape architect, and Anna Halprin was a dancer and choreographer. Together they developed the RSVPCycles, a practice-based theory that acts as a framework for creative processes(Lawrence Halprin on Design: RSVP Cycles,2003). RSVP cycles are comprised of R(esources), (S)cores, (V)aluaction, (P)erformance. I wanted particularly to explore scores, the way in which something could be drawn likea musical or choreographic score to direct people how to move through and experience a place.  For this we used a map-score methodology practiced by a research team in Washington (Olmedo and Christmann, 2018).

Within the participant group, one person had some mobility difficulties, and one was visually impaired. The exercises we used were always modified and adapted where needed so that everyone was able to fully participate.

The instructions for the sensory walks were for participants to take each other on a walk in the garden or nearby area, for one partner to lead for 5 minutes and then the other to lead on the 5 minute return journey. On the walk to take your partner through some different sensory feelings – e.g from warm to cold, from inside to outside, from noisy to quiet. Returning to the meeting room, after a brief discussion, I asked participants to design a walk, thinking about the spaces that were important to them, and the questions of

Where would you take someone to show them your home?

What is the story of Deptford you want to tell?

Where would you go?

What would you direct them to look at or notice?

How would you ask them to act or respond?

What questions might you ask them?

One of the final outputs of the project were ‘performance walks’, personal routes around Deptford created by participants. These developed from initial sensory walks, where participants guided each other on short walks and then documented their emotional and sensory responses. The final walks reflect each participant’s relationship with Deptford and their response to the question ‘what makes Deptford home for you?

There are five walks to experience. The details of each can be accessed below – all have a ‘literal’ route map as well as a more abstract depiction of the walks. Four of the participants recorded audio which accompanies the walks, that can be accessed by scanning the relevant QR code.