Artist Statement

Practicing psychogeography, my art practice is the exploration of selected spatial experiences. My work unites place memories of the past, such as collected travel experiences, with an exploration of specific neighborhoods and selected urban places. Exploring space via the practice of walking is an important aspect of my approach. Placing an emphasis upon my pedestrian experiences of the built environment my artistic practice is deeply embedded in the historic legacy of the Situationist International and influenced by thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre and Michel De Certeau.

What originally started as an unconscious process has morphed into a highly conscious practice, closely tied to the collection of field research of urban environments which I set out to analyze and/or in which I am installing my work. My paintings and tape-installations, as well as my contributions to multi-media collaborations, are reactions to and an analysis of my own movement through physical space. My walking art projects allow me to share my artistic-research practice and methodology and set out to encourage participants to actively analyze their urban everyday life in the city they live in.

Even though my installations and paintings appear highly structured, elements of spontaneity and improvisation are an integral part. My current practice is situation specific, and I continuously try to involve a relationship between materials, concepts, actions and locations.

My work sets out to create an altered spatial experience encouraging my audience and participants to reflect upon their everyday spatial behavior and to partake in a meaning generation of global place-making structures and strategies of the 21st century. I set out to create an immersive environment offering altered and thus new spatial situations that provoke critical thinking and puzzle my audience—intellectually as well as physically.

These above mentioned methodologies also inform my research which investigates the relationship between art and gentrification through the exploration of walking art practices. By walking art, I mean artistic practices that—via the act of walking— set out to write and read the city from the perspective of everyday practitioners. In my work, San Francisco’s Mission District serves as an exemplary case study. I propose that the analysis of walking art provides new perspectives through which one can engage with the twenty-first century global city and the connection between urban renewal and the arts. This research project set out to prove that artists, through their practice, can also be understood as setting out to extend contemporary art and gentrification debates by taking on the role of urban researcher, activist and/or intermediary.