i.5. I Am Here Now
Photography & Book Design
I Am Here Now
Michel de Certeau describes the act of walking as a form of conversation we have with our surroundings, a rhetorical device that pedestrians use to give meaning to the urban spaces they inhabit. He proposes that human footsteps engage in a dialectic with the established spatial order of the city and that walking has the effect of respecting or transgressing this order. Cities, in other words, are living organisms in which built structures and living beings are in constant dialogue with one-another.
This project began with a series of instructions for walking in Berlin provided by twelve impromptu guides. Some knew the city intimately, and others had never even been there. The directives privileged subjectivity over geography, and led me through the city as an observer and participant rather than a passer-by.
“Set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless.”—Georges Perec
I Am Here Now was designed and printed in spring 2019 under the mentorshop of David Voss at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
—Format: 5.35” x 7.85”
—40 pages perfect bound
—Printing: Indigo Press