Walk With Me (2011-12)

A site-specific piece made for individual audience members in downtown Chicago, this work used the conceit of a series of voicemail messages left for the audience member, via an mp3 player, from a character who once lived in the city. Each audience member walks through a park and eventually travels to the upper floors of a nearby building, looking out onto the street, which they just traversed, seeing others experience the same walk. The piece invites the audience to embody a sense of distance by suddenly seeing their own pathway through the city – from a bird’s eye view of the street below. In this piece, I aim to create a strangely intimate relationship with my audience. Here, a public space transforms into a personal landscape. I contemplate the histories we carry with us. By occupying public space through creative and relatively low-tech means, I inquire about the power of our own personal relationships and about how our subjectivity might supersede, mix with, and traverse the order of the city street.

The piece was later presented as part of SUPERNOVA Performance Festival outside of Washington, DC in Rosslyn, VA in June 2013 and as part of Conceal/Reveal - a public performance event produced by Casa Duno in the south loop neighborhood of Chicago in August 2013.