Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

In the last decades there has been a proliferation of “experimental” and “creative” geographies, where investigators have started to use innovative participatory and artistic actions/interventions to understand social behaviour and to change it. The methodology and the results of our work tried to align with an experimental or creative approach, making geography dialogue with art. We decided to study and intervene three “desire paths” -social and shared trajectories that subvert design and planning orders- in the city of Lisbon. Having identified and chosen three diverse types of paths our work consisted in making visible the invisible trails walkers cover in the city, experimenting with a performative exercise and recording in film how these urban interventions affected the users of the space. Inspired by the transience of the act of walking itself, we sought to intervene in manners that aligned with this sense of temporariness and evental. Hence, we used fleeting materials playing with the attention, corporality and rhythm of walkers, and with the texture and ephemerality of the paths. We decided to carry out four urban interventions in the desire paths and we used the video recording as the main method of data collection and subsequently also of presentation. Rather than a written text, our final results were elaborated in the production of a 16 minute video that allowed us to draw from and immerse into the world of visual culture, for us an innovative form of communicating the process and the results of the investigation.