Nightwalker is a developing project on women walking at night.
Firstly; I have been exploring this topic through a monthly walk at night, within a collective of night/dark interested artists who walk wherever they are, simultaenously but remote, to then share our experiences within an email thread.
Within each invitation to walk, are the points:
- There is no set duration, this is up to you.
- Consider your fellow nightwalkers lightly, the absence/presence of them.
- Do what you want with your walk, it's for you and whatever you encounter.
- Know how you might document this experience before you leave.
- Please share something from your walk within the thread, this can be in any form.
I am currently experimenting with developing a score for this nightwalk, ideas of soundwalks, performance, writing, dance. These monthly walks keep my own process alive and in tandem with others. If you would like to join you are very welcome, please get in touch.
Exciting news; Nightwalker is now a research project supported by Brigstow, at University of Bristol. A collaboration with academic researchers Dr Eleanor Rycroft and Dr Andy Flack.
Nightwalker brings together three perspectives; historical, environmental and performative to consider the feminine contemporary nightwalker. Typically our perception of a woman walking at night is shrouded in danger, this project seeks to examine and alter the narrative of women’s presence within the urban night. And In doing so identify what treasures or transformations are being lost through women’s exclusion from certain spaces and times. Both walking and the night time environment have significant impacts on our physical health and wellbeing. This research will pay close attention to the effects of nightwalking on our emotions, physicality and imagination, and how women's wellbeing may be intrinsically connected to the practice of nightwalking.
The research team:
- Eleanor Rycroft (Theatre, University of Bristol) is an early modern theatre expert, interested in practice, performance, politics and gender. She explores representations of the body in early modern history and drama, as well as in the performance of classical texts today.
- Andy Flack (History, University of Bristol) is an animal and environmental historian, working primarily on human engagements with the non-human animal world across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This research will also include some artists from the aforementioned nightwalking group, to test and discuss nightwalking scores collaboratively developed and inspired by sharing the existing research from our individual fields of study.