Kaylie. J. Stuart

Three Walks and a Pause

A series of Audio Walks in and around Utrecht. NL:

Three Walks and a Pause is a series of audio walks made in and around Utrecht, accompanied by a publication, [T]here. Together they form part of a wider practice exploring walking in its broadest sense — from the physical to the psychological journeys that also require movement.

Through this trajectory I have become attuned to patterns of repetition, (ir)regularity and synchronicity, echoed in both written and acoustic elements: journeys that are uniquely personal yet universal in their resonance. I tread the streets with collaborators, exploring the hidden layers of memory held in a locality. These conversational and sonic searchings recontour the geographic tissue of place and how it wraps around recollection, surfacing the invisible structures that shape our being.

Historical and local research, phone calls, transcribed dialogue and the harvesting of locational sonic snapshots form a poly-vocal archive. Building on it, I use anecdotal storytelling and sonic composition to mediate bodily, environmental, political, societal and temporal flows — exploring our proximity to the repetitive systems that inhabit us and the social spaces we move through.

The She Wolf sits patiently in the heart of Utrecht’s inner city. Blindfolded, unable to walk she waits under the oak tree. Marooned on a grassy island, next to the old prison, her nose pointed, as if sniffing out freedom or failure. She’s been waiting and listening for the last 20 years.

We discover her motionless form; we listen with her whilst guided by the Audio Walk. An anecdotal narrative intertwined with a soundscape, that meanders as we move. The sonic components, recorded by use of a hydrophone, walking the watery loop of the Singel Canal, capturing the liquid flow that encircles the city, in combination with field recordings that eavesdrop on objects, people and places. As we listen, we move through multiple interior and exterior spaces, above and below ground, in and out of time.

The content is triggered by conversations with strangers, with whom I have walked, we trace a path through the city, recounting social, historical, and personal histories. Together, through listening, we return, whilst we may walk the same route, we also explore the possibility of taking our own journey

This Audio Journey departs every Saturday, at 13:00, from Smeerbrug, Utrecht, until the future ends…..