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Arnolfini - est 1961


Join artist-researchers Wrights & Sites as they draw on 18 years of disrupted ambulatory practices to walk and talk the city into existence.

“If you’ve ever stood, in the early hours of the morning, and watched a city fill with snow, you will know that the first walker changes everything…” – Wrights & Sites, A Mis-Guide To Anywhere

Peripatetic practices tend to emphasise the transitional and ephemeral. But is walking always enough, theoretically or practically? Can we take our walking a step further? Is there a way of thinking about walkers and other itinerants, not only as users, critics or fleeting dreamers re-imagining the city, but as active contributors to the built environment and its development?

Please meet Wrights & Sites at Arnolfini Box Office to join the walk. Wear sensible footwear and dress for the weather.

Walk & Talk is a series of lectures and workshops presented informally whilst walking around Bristol. These guided tours are specially developed and led by invited artists and academics with an interest in walking, who will consider the site specific features of the city as part of their discussion.

The Walk & Talk series is part of a programme of events presented alongside Richard Long’s major new solo exhibition at Arnolfini, TIME AND SPACE, 31 July to 15 November 2015.

Wrights & Sites are four artist-researchers (Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner) who, for eighteen years, have focused on people’s relationships to places, cities and walking. They employ disrupted walking strategies as tools for playful debate, collaboration, intervention and spatial meaning-making. The outcomes of their work vary from project to project, but frequently include site-specific performance, Mis-Guided Tours (e.g. Stadtverführungen in Wien, Tanzquartier Wien and Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, 2007), published Mis-Guides (e.g. A Mis-Guide To Anywhere, launched ICA, London, 2006), ‘drifts’, mythogeographic mapping, public art (e.g. Everything you need to build a town is here for ‘Wonders of Weston’, Situations/Field Art Projects, Weston-super-Mare, 2010) or installations (e.g. mis-guided, Belluard Bollwerk International Festival, Fribourg, 2008), as well as public presentations and articles.

This event is part of the Art Weekender – Bristol and Bath.