The participatory walk can radically reframe one’s everyday experience. The walk takes the poem off of the page, the performance off the stage, and translates it to the street. How does a photographer see the world? How does a choreographer move through space and what can they teach us? Each walk is a transitory performance that brings people together in unexpectedly beautiful ways.
Elastic City: Prompts for Participatory Walks is a new book that will include instructions (aka prompts) from more than 35 artists' walks along with a section that features the insights and philosophy of EC Founder Todd Shalom, who spent 14 years presenting and refining walks. The section, titled 'Creating Your Own Walk,' covers conceptual, narrative and logistical concerns, how to encourage participation and how to best promote this work. Elastic City has fostered and grown the participatory walk form and is sharing its know-how for the first time here in writing. No other book like this exists.
The book will feature 48 prompts and walk ephemera from an eclectic roster of visual, performance and text-based artists, including: luciana achugar, Andrés Andreani, Chiara Bernasconi, Becca Blackwell, Michelle Boulé, Tania Bruguera & Mujeres en Movimiento, Isabella Bruno, Cristian Carracedo, Kate Colby, Jon Cotner, Jose De Diego, Karen Finley, Neil Freeman, Anthony Goicolea, Neil Goldberg, Miguel Gutierrez, Nisan Almog Haymian, Riley Hooker, Matthew Jensen, Nina Katchadourian & Andrew Zarou, Wayne Koestenbaum, Amichai Lau Lavie & Shawn Shafner, Mimi Lien, Erin Markey, Robert Mauksch, Daniel Neumann, The Office of Recuperative Strategies (featuring Christian Hawkey & Rachel Levitsky), Okwui Okpokwasili, Hayal Pozanti, Anne Percoco, Sarah Schulman, Todd Shalom, Niegel Smith, Leandro Tartaglia, Andrea Williams, Kristin Geneve Young, and Pamela Z.
There will be books available for pick-up if you've already ordered via Kickstarter. You can also purchase books at the event.
Please join us for drinks and prompts offered by a bunch of artists who are featured in the book!
About Todd Shalom
Todd Shalom works in visual media and participatory performance. He is the founder and director of Elastic City, a non-profit organization that produced over 200 participatory walks and events for the public between 2010 and 2016. In that time, he collaborated with over a hundred artists in a variety of disciplines to adapt their sensibilities to the participatory walk format, in addition to developing and leading numerous walks of his own.
In collaboration with performance artist/director Niegel Smith, Todd regularly conceives and stages interactive performances in public and private environments. Together, they are ringleaders of Willing Participant, which whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens.
Todd has taught participatory art as a faculty member at Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts. His work has been presented by organizations such as Abrons Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, Columbia University GSAPP, Des Moines Art Center, The Invisible Dog, ISSUE Project Room, MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, P.S. 122 and Stanford University. Todd has been an artist-in-residence at Akiyoshidai International Art Village (Japan), Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and SHIFT (EFA Project Space).
Website: www.elastic-city.org