About

The Walking Stitch challenges the public to encounter the urban environment in an unfamiliar way.  Participants walk through the city while embroidering their path onto an unlabelled map.  Like Theseus in the Minotaur maze, they must use a thread to mark their way. 

A twist on the Situationists’ dérive, The Walking Stitch combines a psychogeographic approach to the city with traditional methods of making. The unlabelled map that serves as both the basis for navigation and the substrate for stitching reduces the city to its basic shapes and outlines. The experience of urban space is recorded in a tactile, tangible way. It is a meditation on the relationship between the map and the territory.

In an increasingly digital world where smooth touchscreens replace more complex tactile interactions and GPS-enabled smartphones guide us with spoken procedural directions, skills such as map reading and handicrafts are neglected. ​The Walking Stitch​ seeks to reacquaint the public with the appeal of these activities.