Urban Portraits. Fieldwork. Walking with Ms Sunflower

Research Project. Spatial Ethnographic Cartography. 2012 

This project is part of the field work undertaken to generate Urban Portraits, a practice-based research project to construct spatial ethnographic Atlases portraying personal geographies, rituals, daily routines and imaginative spaces of individual Senior Citizens. Over a period of 3 months we undertook explorative walks with individual Senior Citizens in Stuttgart, Germany. They curated the walks with the mission to show us their everyday world. In Ms Sunflower's (not her real name) case her daily routine involved driving long distances to places dotted all around Stuttgart. Islands connected by car journeys; a precarious construct relying deeply on her ability to drive, and yet a fascinating construct. Hidden behind an unassuming door lay a world of Bridge playing and other intensities. A typical car parking space turned out to be a place of great significance, right in front of her childhood home. Unassuming, undisclosed and otherwise hidden everyday spaces formed the core of her daily routine. A daily routine that was carefully choreographed and scripted, forming a deeply personal landscape in a space that we could quite easily dismiss as unimportant. 

A practice-based cross-disciplinary research project supported by the Region of Baden-Würtemberg and awarded with a Research Fellowship and Residency at Academy Schloss Solitude © offsea 2012-2015.