Trekking Guide: a project by Ursa Prek

EXHIBITION IN WINDOWS
8 January to 7 February 2021
See more at kunstpodium-t.com/trekking-guide 

Trekking Guide is a project which researches the relations between subject and space — spatial experience. Through the process of memory and familiarization the public space is inverted to the scale of a building, a house, an apartment: home. To inscribe oneself into the space means to form relations and relationships toward one’s surroundings. The process of ‘befriending’ a certain environment, therefore, is conditioned with all our past experiences, memories; our own spatial archive which backtracks our intimate history.

Memory is deeply connected to space, which entails space is hardly separable from time in which we gather our experiences. As we move through and within it we form the connections through our past spatial imprints, associating, dragging parallels and slowly constructing unique impressions which now define the particular location. For this constructions are as much reconstructions as they are unique. The truth becomes irrelevant, we bend and adapt it; unconsciously we build our own maps.

The intervention, done in a form of marking the path, marks it pragmatically as well as holds the memory of my childhood landscapes. It is the walk, the repetition of an act that enables us to form spatial memories. The process of territorial exploration becomes the process of memorization and, lastly, archiving. It is a form of mapping (but because it grows from the structure in our minds it cannot be compared to objective mapping processes) drawn out with different anchor points, reshaping and changing every time we revisit it. The project realises itself on two separate but mutually dependable grounds: the public space of Tilburg and Kunstpodium T. On public grounds the route of walking is selected and on this path, the marks (Marcations) are placed, which form a direction indication system. This system associates to the one used in Slovenian hiking trails. In the second phase of the project, is a routine walking the marked route. After every walk I returned to the exhibition space, archiving its memory in the form of a drawing. This is a process of translation, revealing the subjective functions of spatial memory. Combined with the imagery taken from the family archive, the two spatial experiences overlap and the path in Tilburg has become one of my many past homes.

Ursa Prek took part in a covid-proof mini-residency in December 2020 and January 2021 in Kunstpodium T. The results of her research are shown in the windows until Sunday 7 February and on the webpage.