Peter Westenberg and Martijn Tellinga; 60 minutes, 7 tracks, dutch spoken, 2009

A narrated audiowalk about migration, networks, roots, relations and culture, situated in the quarter Osdorp in Amsterdam. While walking with a map and a mp3 player, the walker listens to a story told from the perspective of several local and exotic plants. Point of departure is garden ‘De Wiedijk’ a green oases in this residential area.

Commissioned by Soundtrackcity
More info on the site of soundtrackcity: (Dutch)
http://www.soundtrackcity.nl/amsterdam/wandelingen/osdorp/

Download audiofiles as .zip:
http://download.omroep.nl/vpro/destad/soundtrackcity/Soundtrackcity%20Osdorp.zip

Slideshow video impression of the walk:
http://www.archive.org/details/Autochtuin

with Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Performative walk, Ping festival, Spain, 2008,

Balearic Routes + Routines proposed group walks through the commercial heart of Palma de Majorca. Wearing shoes that were equiped with sensors, wireless camera’s, and other detection devices walkers explored privately owned radio signals, public magnetic fields, commercial area’s while sniffing for wifi video signals and captured data from unusual viewpoints.

Short documentation video:
http://www.archive.org/details/BalearicRoutesRoutines

3 channel video installation, 3 x 12 m, 2007

A school is moving house. The way the students deal with each other, their daily routines change accordingly.
Rooms Roles Rules is a collaborative film made with students and tutors from the International School the Hague, and was commissioned by arts center Stroom, Den Haag.

http://www.archive.org/details/Rooms_Rules_Roles

Super 8 / 2.30 minutes / colour / stereo / no dialogue / 2005

Siesta time. A dog barking. Deserted modernist outskirts of Mallorcan city Andratx. Asphalt roads steam under a scorching sun. A man walks down the pavement carrying bags with lemons.

http://www.archive.org/details/LemonsFall

Good year / bad year

Production Martine Nederend and Femke Snelting, photo’s Otto Snoek, commisioned by CBK Rotterdam en Het Nieuwe Huren, 2006

Good year / bad year is a diary work for one person. During exactly one year, he or she notes daily her best and worst moment of that day, and by doing so, compiles future memories of the year.

The daily memories are written on two calenders that are mounted side by side, one for the good moments, the other for the worst moments. At the end of the year the two blocks are bound as a calendar that can be used the following year. Each day of that following year, the user encounters a good or bad memory to exactly one year earlier.

Good year / bad year can be rented through the website of Het Nieuwe Huren
http://www.hetnieuwehuren.com/

(source HNH)

Beschrijving van het project
Soms lijkt het alsof de jaren van ons leven voorbij vliegen; het is moeilijk je precies te herinneren wanneer bepaalde gebeurtenissen plaatsvonden of wat er ook al weer bijzonder was aan het voorbije jaar. Met de kalender Goed jaar / Slecht jaar inventariseer je hoogtepunten en dieptepunten van een jaar uit je leven. Door met dit project aan de slag te gaan zet je een reflectie in gang op je dagindeling, je routines, relaties, wat je leuk en minder leuk vindt aan je leven. Het resultaat is een lijst goede momenten die je als herinnering toevoegt aan je volgende jaar, en/of een lijst slechte ervaringen die je kunt gebruiken om toekomstige vergissingen en teleurstellingen te voorkomen. Alleen als er iets heel bijzonders gebeurt blijft dat als hoogte- of dieptepunt bij; dit zijn vaak zaken die onverwachts overkomen: een begrafenis, loterij gewonnen, auto-ongeluk etc.

Soms lijkt het bijna alsof externe omstandigheden ons leven bepalen. Een leuk gezelschap, een aangename hobby, dol op je huisdier, favoriet tv programma, lekkere sex, mooi weer, goed gesprek etc. worden al snel geaccepteerd als vanzelfsprekende onderdelen van ons gewone bestaan. Door dagelijks de hoogte- en dieptepunten van de dag te benoemen krijgen momenten die dreigen te verdwijnen in de grote grijze massa van gewone gebeurtenissen de aandacht en waardering die ze verdienen. Goed jaar / Slecht jaar is een procesmatig werk dat door actieve betrokkenheid van de huurder tot stand komt. Het werk vraagt commitment van de huurder, die door middel van dit werk een experiment met zijn/haar werkelijkheidsbeleving aangaat.

Goed jaar / Slecht jaar is een participatief zelfportret: het portret dat de huurder door middel van dit werk van zichzelf samenstelt ontstaat in de veranderlijke en beïnvloedbare context van de voortschrijdende tijd, en is afhankelijk van persoonlijke stemmingen en ervaringen, maar vormt ook een verslag van de huurder als onderdeel van een netwerk van sociale relaties en verhoudingen.

performance and 3 channel video installation, 2004

Eco loop started as a performance, on the occassion of the PING festival in Mallorca. I collected litter along the heavily polluted road between Andratx and S’Arraco. Cleaned everything metticulously and put it back exactly where I found it.
The video of the performance is shown in a loop on three monitors, showing the same objects being retreived, cleaned and returned by the side of the road.

16 mm / 4.30 minutes / B+W / stereo / no dialogue / production: de Filmwerkplaats / 2003

A women enclosed in her apartment, coming to terms with her place in the world. Experimental narrative incorporating notions of silent film, repetitive acts of housekeeping and grey city skies.

Series of performative walks, 2006, Brussels, produced by Constant

Visit the projects website for full documentation

The project Routes + Routines takes place in residential areas in Brussels. Through interventions, actions and presentations in public space, the project creates dialogs with the day-to-day reality of the street corner, roundabout or zebra-crossing. R + R looks at the relation between technology, geography, urban representation and visual imagination and investigates the city from inside out.

The recent re-validation of Situationism has staged the city again as a platform for spectacles, unexpected situations and aesthetic coincidences, the city as a layered locus with unique live and logic, a chaotic post-industrial organism where functionalism and planning team up with historic remains and social marginality.

In an informationalist Utopian world vision everything can be interpreted as programmable and the city is no exception. Routes + Routines proposes a comparison between on the one hand romantic notions of urbanity in which the individual experience is the starting point for a subjective interpretation of locations and on the other: the structure of binary language where all information can be reduced to opposites; to zero’s and ones.

If cities, social groups and identities can simply be regarded as programmable entities, can we than approach cities as hardware on which social, economic, political programme’s play; directing and determining behavior, movement, norms, interactions and relations between citizens? Can we question how this programmability is employed and re-think and re-model urban power structures, dominance of capital, racial injustice, property, normality? How can urban programs that are seemingly fixed be diverted, changed and appropriated?

Routes + Routines investigate low-tech means of communication and is curious about the potential of no tech-media such as gossip, backchat, word to mouth in a world dominated by (communication) strategies. How can looking, observing and reporting be recaptured from the paradigm of control and surveillance and how can they be employed to stimulate the imagination of citizens? How can we map multi -plicity, -culturality, -layering and changeability starting from the details and individual observation rather then the bird perspective?

Walking with Crispin, Dordrecht, 2005

Forgotten stories are re-discovered, tales are told and new myths are constructed during three walks through the Dordrecht neighborhood Krispijn (Crispin). The project website contains lots of info, Dutch only.

Routes and Routines, brochure, 54 pages, Hasselt, 2008

A joint publication by Constant vzw and Z33
Texts by: Peter Westenberg, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Wendy van Wynsberghe
Graphic design: OSP, Ludivine Loiseau and Yi Jiang

Download in PDF (34 mb)

This booklet documents five network walks as a part of the Routes and Routines roject Peter Westenberg developed for the exhibition Place@space in art center Z33. The walks were organised between March 13 and May 17 2008 and traversed the urban environment in all its complexity. Through streets, the public domain, the internet, radio waves, semi-public territories, legal space, fantasies, historical footprints and technological connections, the walkers explored the boundaries of the public nature of the city.