WALKS
ABOUT N+K
Since 2017, friends Corinne and Simon (an artist and a writer) have been collaborating to create and lead place-responsive walks that involve imagination, memory and group participation.
RECENTLY…
2023/24 - WALK - KITE MARKS: AN ATMOSPHERIC WALK IN CAMBRIDGE
"On the night of 18th June 1940, a Heinkel He 111 Luftwaffe airplane set off from German-occupied Schiphol airfield, Amsterdam on a mission to destroy the strategically important Mill Road Rail Depot in Cambridge, England. The story of our walk begins here …”
Moving westwards and crossing both a liminal and porous boundary between ‘town and gown’ in Cambridge, N&K employ archive ‘correspondences’ including old photographs, local newspaper reports and antique postcards to form an interpersonal narrative which begins in Vicarage Terrace in the eastern Petersfield district of the city and the site of one of the first recorded incidents of British civilian casualties in World War II following an enemy air raid in the early hours of 19th June 1940.
Rewalks: 1st October 2023 and 22nd September 2024
First walk: 28th May 2023
2024 - WALK - ATTEMPTS AT EXHAUSTING A POSTCARD IN PARIS
This approximately 2-kilometre ‘slow’ walk takes as its inspiration the near 50th anniversary of the three days in May 1974 writer Georges Perec spent documenting Place Saint Sulpice through a method of ‘infraordinary’ observation. Guided in person by Simon, accompanied by booklets, badges, plans and cards by Corinne, the ambulant method of observation is punctuated by discussion and the bringing into play of temporal and spatial ‘correspondences’ through antique postcards with a connection to place.
First walk: 31st March 2024 for Festival Image Ouvert, Paris.
2023 - WALK - KENSINGTON EXCHANGES
Weaving between Kensington Underground station and Kensington Gardens, our 2-hour ‘slow walk’ considers how, via walking, we might ‘find our words’ along the way. Accompanied by pieces of antique post, we invite a group of walkers to call up connections between words and locality using shared readings of handwritten postal items. Kensington Exchanges offers space to reflect on, exchange and encounter alternative views of time and place.
Rewalk: 10th December 2023 for The Walkative Society.
First walk: 21st May 2023 for RCA Hidden.
2022 - WALK - ORLANDSCAPED
Orlandscaped (/ɔːˈlandskeɪpt/: adjective) : a re-walk in Bloomsbury WC1, led by N&K.
Taking the writer Virginia Woolf's time-travelling Orlando as our cue, and accompanied by literary fragments, we set out from an Oak tree in Bloomsbury to travel through time and space. Along our route - first walked in 2018 as Orlandscape(s) then shaped by N&K over the years through walking and re-walking - we speculate, like Woolf’s protagonist, how might it (and we) be the same, but different, on return? Our process relies on chance encounters, and we stitch together fragments over time, to speculate and create an alternative sense of place.
First walk: 12th June 2022 for The Walkative Society.
2022 - WALK - CAMBERWELL CORRESPONDENCE
Meeting (and greeting) at Card Corner, SE5, artist and writer collaboration N&K begin a two-hour participatory walking tour of Camberwell with antique postcards and letters. Filing through the local streets and greens, examining hand-pressed papers, reading inky lines, taking note of faded road signs and studying spent stamps, a dialogue between voices past and present emerges. Camberwell Correspondence enlists homely historical ephemera, creative speculation and personal memories to enliven details in the urban space. 'Correspondence' works as a collective noun to mean the exchange of missives (letters, postcards, etc), our attention to 'correspondences' while exploring and the co-responding that (hopefully) takes place between walk participants.
Rewalks: 27th February 2022 and 21st May 2024 for The Walkative Society.
First walk: 19th October 2019 for Art Licks Weekend 2019.
2020 / 2021 - WALK - HOLDING COURTS
Prompted by a pre-lockdown invitation from a group of artists-in-residence, N&K have been working across email on new lines of enquiry. Holding Courts entitles our first walk woven by shuttling words and images across the internet. Using antique correspondence connected to law courts to initiate a dialogue, inviting speculation and literary investigation to shape discussion, we examine and explore (at safe distance) suburban streets in the vicinity of Lambeth’s once-upon-a-time county court.
Rewalks: 27th June 2021 and 4th July 2021
First walk: 11th October 2020
2019 - TALK - WALKING WITH CORRESPONDENCE
Walkings New Movements Conference at University of Plymouth (UK) November 1st to 3rd. 2019, Roland Levinsky Building, Drakes Circus, Plymouth.
For ‘Walking’s New Movements’ N&K presented a paper on the theme of ‘Correspondence’. Beginning with an overview of the type of ‘fragments’ that relate to correspondence – notes, photographs, postcards, old maps, and published text – focus moved to a collection of antique handwritten postcards (c.1900-1920) that shape N&K walks. One such postcard - sent from Stockwell, London to an address in Plymouth, 3rd May 1904 - brought home the artefact’s potential to trigger discussion, explore unexpected subjects, and unearth new meaning whilst walking. By studying overt and covert relationships between sender and addressee, message and illustration, intention and interpretation N&K conveyed how walking with correspondence can spark convivial investigations.
‘Walking with Correspondence’ based on the conference paper is published in ‘Walking Bodies: papers, provocations, actions’, 2020, Triarchy Press.
Organisers: Helen Billinghurst (University of Plymouth), Claire Hind (York St John University) and Phil Smith (University of Plymouth)
Delivered: 2nd November 2019
2019 - WALK - CAMDEN RELAY
‘Camden Relay’ is a 50-minute walk within the Piazza of the British Library led by N&K. Beginning at the Library’s Midland Road entrance, walkers are guided on a single lap, pausing to exchange observations triggered by antique postcards in some way bearing a link to Camden. En-route, participants pause at six points for convivial discussion and dialogue. Half-way, they pick up a tin-can telephone and convey a message along the twine. At other moments conversation is fuelled by the mention of museums, a mystery train, past telephone numbers, the flow of handwriting and the movement of knowledge. Reading fragments of texts by Walter Benjamin, Jorge Louis Borges, and Tim Ingold, Camden Relay sheds new light on a small corner of London by innovative use of ‘correspondence’.
First walk: two walks on 13th July 2019 for Somers Town History Club at Somers Town Festival 2019.
2019 - WALK - COMMONS & CORRECTIONS, SW2
Circling the streets of Brixton, South London, we cross a river, traverse a common, climb a hill, sail past a windmill and reflect on the treadmill. Accompanied by fragments of recently published text, antique postcards, and cryptic handwritten communications, we wander, observe and speculate whilst addressing two main questions: What is held in common? What has been corrected?
First walk: 24th February 2019 for The Walkative Society.
2018 - WALK - (OR)LANDSCAPE(S)
Taking Virginia Woolf's time travelling Orlando as our cue, we set out from a young English Oak tree in a graveyard in Bloomsbury. Over the course of our speculative walk we draw upon archive images, quotation and memory, to offer some alternative views on the life (and death) of 'landscape' in Bloomsbury.
Rewalk: 15th May 2018 for Arts Week 2018, Birkbeck.
First walk: 18th March 2018 for The Walkative Society.
2017 - WALK / RESEARCH - ELEPHANT MEMORY
Artwork by Corinne Noble for N&K in response to ‘Elephant Memory’ a walk and essay by Simon King.
King’s essay “Elephant Memory” is a non-chronological account of the documentation and mapping of walks over an eighteen-month period around Elephant and Castle, a part of South East London that, via its designation as a prime ‘regeneration opportunity area’, is experiencing a rapid but problematic transformation. The original group walk is constructed performatively in the shape of a spatial and temporal narrative, i.e. the solving of a mystery prompted by an American magazine’s 1941 photograph of bomb-damaged Sayer Street SE17, held in the Imperial War Museum archive. Published in the Journal of Creative Writing, Intellect Journals, 2018 (2017).
