walks & workshops

Become an Ant · A Body & Space Workshop | Hackney Wick, London An unusual afternoon of movement and spatial exploration near Hackney Wick If we were ants… How would we sense the world around us? How would we move through it? And how would we work together? Come and see the world from a completely different perspective, become an ”ant,“ move and collaborate the way they do, and spend an afternoon exploring touch, bodily perception and space in a way you probably never have before.

What if a walk could become a typeface? FROM WALK TO FONT is a hands-on participatory design experience where we turn everyday observations into letterforms. No previous drawing, typography or design experience is required. Each session is designed as a 1-hour activity, but depending on the pace of the group and the activity, it may run for up to 1 hour 30 minutes.

Still Inside the Wall: Roman London Guided Walk is a two-hour guided walk led by @pixlogist and @jiayuoo_.

With Oni On. In collaboration with Red Jade Pavilion, Art Workers x Red Jade and EAST2046 CIC. A writing session translating the shadow drawings made in July across participants’ mother tongues.

With tat/boo and Replace Place. Reading the Chinese shamate practice of 炸街 against London’s histories of migration, class and gentrification, asking who is permitted to be visible in public space.

With Angela Foe, in collaboration with Red Jade Pavilion, Art Workers x Red Jade and EAST2046 CIC. Collective shadow sketching on handmade mulberry paper (桑皮紙), an intangible cultural heritage craft; fragments pooled anonymously and built on by other participants.

the Placeholder × Along the River City Walk, in collaboration with Walk-in London. Researched and wrote character histories so participants could walk the street as four generations of its residents.

the Placeholder × Lisa Cao, within Lend a Hand: Community Market by Bouncing Around.

Presented as part of Untitled Kitchen, organised by Slash Arts, with architectural input from Hannah. Two hours reading King’s Cross as a palimpsest — burial ground against railway, ghost tracks, privately owned public space, a closed station — closing aboard a canal boat.

Pre-fair public programme for Outland Publishing Fair. A two-part walk reading the city’s Roman and Medieval layers, from the Tower Hill wall fragment to the London Mithraeum and the Guildhall amphitheatre outline.

Pre-fair public programme for Outland Publishing Fair, co-hosted with Elizabeth Wan and Stephanie Cheung. A workshop on place-based writing, oral history, mapping and archival practice; my collection of East Asian printed matter served as the open library and is now held by the Placeholder.

Tracing the vertical ascent of the city’s social and political hierarchy from Central Market to Conduit Road, documenting the General Post Office before its demolition.

Peeling back the layers of the city’s oldest district, from the 1841 colonial landing at Possession Point through the 1894 plague to Tai Ping Shan.

With Ricardo Ke. Coinciding with the 697th Lord Mayor’s Show. From wartime ruin to Brutalist utopia, along the high-walks to Spitalfields Market.

With coexist co. Run for two cohorts. A three-hour walk on migration, gentrification and belonging, from post-war Afro-Caribbean settlement through the late-1990s to post-2012 transformation, closing in a roundtable on what gentrification means.

With Zheng Chu and Shuntak Gogood. Decoding the everyday across the Tanzhou Village History Museum, the Ou Clan Ancestral Hall, the Rainbow Embankment and Dengzhou Head Lighthouse.

A dialogue with local history and myth, with participants who grew up in the area becoming guides; introduced soundscape as a way of reading place.

With coexist co.

With coexist co. Introduced the flâneuring question card as an opening ritual.

With coexist co. First outing of the Flâneur Journal and flâneuring cards; each participant took a turn leading the route.

With Shuntak Gogood. Walking combined with making — themed groups followed food and plants through the antique street, then turned observations into collage and writing back at the venue.

A two-part reading experiment: participants selected books blind, guided only by quotations, then re-wrapped them in kraft paper and hemp rope and drew their first impressions onto the blank covers. Three weeks later the group reconvened for a ritual of separation — detaching the covers — and read their reading notes aloud to one another. The earliest form of what became the Placeholder.