Simon Pope Netwalking

28-29 March 2013. Free entry.

Masterclass 28 March, 11am-4pm
Public Walk 29 March, 11am-4pm

UK-based media artist Simon Pope explores themes such as walking with others, negotiating routes, and exploring relationships between people and our relationships with 'land', taking a dialogical approach to his work. As part of his Australasian tour, Pope is inviting participants for a Masterclass at The Physics Room on Thursday 28 March and will lead a public walk through the city of Christchurch the following day.

The public walk will depart from The Physics Room on Friday 29 March, 11am and requires a normal level of fitness, but will be punctuated by frequent breaks for discussion and refreshments. The public walks in Wellington, Christchurch and Sydney will present different aspects of walking-as-art, drawing on examples of Pope's work, with each walk responding to different forms and terrains.

Where Pope has often used walking as a means to explore various ways in which an 'ideal' of dialogue is modeled – through a roaming across open land for example – the Christchurch workshop takes into account the venue's specific environmental context which is inherently fraught and unstable. This will be an opportunity to discuss Pope's latest research in which he is developing artwork which explores the enmeshedness of social and environmental things, especially at points of crisis, when both land and human, social formations are rapidly reconfigured.

The Masterclass is an opportunity for artists, performers, academics and students to present and discuss walking or related participatory, media or social
art projects with Simon Pope and a group of peers. We are particularly interested in artists working with walking, conversational or dialogic forms, projects that deal with relationship to landscape or environment, expeditionary methodologies and projects that bridge between media art and post-media forms such as walking.

The session at The Physics Room opens the work of artists living in the local area to discussion among peers, with a critical, constructive discussion led by Simon Pope. Artists should bring examples of their work to present to others. These sessions will be of particular interest to those artists working with the ideas addressed by Pope during the Netwalking tour, but all artists are welcome.

These Netwalking events are free of charge, but places are limited so please register.