Uncanny Walks

“Uncanny Walks” is a site-specific performance art project which takes the form of a live walking performance and a digital collage. This workshop-artwork took place in the city of Mitilini on the island of Lesvos, a place for refugees to take shelter and cultural diversity; a place where my family also settled when they left Minor Asia in 1922 in order to survive from the genocide.

 

Going for the first time to this place, a place full of memories of my ancestors, I brought 20 co-walkers which were holding cameras and GPS systems and started following the uncanny elements of the city. Elements that acted as debris of untold stories.

 

There was only one simple rule: if you see something uncanny, you have to approach it, take a photo of it and then move to the next one. All this process was recorded by performer’s GPS systems and the result was a new map based on their experience of the city.

 

As Mitilini is close to Turkey and there are a lot of military camps, the GPS systems were wrongly blurring a lot of parts of the map like if they were military areas. The artwork explores public space, our freedom and diversity in it and the idea of “Walking with”.

 

“Uncanny Walks” was the last part of a workshop I led at the University of the Aegean.