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Sweep and Veer
Sweep and Veer is a limited edition booklet describing seven intimate routes through the city. Each one has been designed as a prompt for the imagination. This does not mean that they are imaginary: we have walked them all, and we hope that the booklet will entice you to try them too. The text does not list everything we saw along the way, nor does it list what you should see. Instead, each route aims to be a framework for experience. So for example, Route 2 links verdant plots hidden within the city centre, Route 5 passes through a series of diminishing spaces and Route 7 picks out sites which can be briefly altered by your actions. However, the guide is inherently unreliable: the city is never static and these routes will have already altered since we walked them. The booklet is available free from Hay Hill market stalls, the Tourist Information Centre, City Hall, galleries and from all museums participating in the CAN.05 arts festival. The booklet complements a site-specific drawing in Hay Hill, Norwich, also entitled Sweep and Veer. Hay Hill is a pedestrianised square which functions as the forecourt for several busy shops, a gathering place for teenagers, a through-route for pedestrians, and as the setting for an assortment of stalls and kiosks. The drawing consists of a network of sinuous white lines drawn on the ground. These lines are based on observations of the way people cross the square. They exaggerate the sense of speed and rhythm created by the criss-crossing of people,s paths. The white lines are interrupted at the centre by a blue quadrilateral that marks the site of a former pub (see Route 6). By breaking the white lines, this shape from the past sets up a space for thought and questions the possibility of completing one,s journey. Sweep and Veer is part of Flow, a collaborative project between Norwich City Council and Commissions East. Flow is part of CAN.05, which is exhibiting contemporary art across Norwich, and beyond, during July and August 2005. Together, the drawing and the booklet draw attention to a potential freedom in routine journeys. To borrow a phrase from Guy Debord's Situationist Theses on Traffic, we are trying to "extend the terrain of play." Townley and Bradby - July 2005 |
A city must
have secret passages. Sharing public space with thousands of
other people is part of city life, so to travel unobserved or
in tranquillity there must be secret passages, or at the very
least lanes, alleys, side doors and short cuts. Each new short
cut you discover redraws your map of the city, connecting the
places that before were separate, making the city more porous
and more yours.