I am walking bidirectional for 12 hours between the central railway station and the campus, where the gallery space for the upcoming exhibition is situated.
Photo: Julia Stein
As an arriving passenger I try to understand the heartbeat of the city and to find my own rhythm inside this new surrounding conditions. This ongoing movement should help me to embody the different rhythms of the city during 7am and 7pm as well as my own different rhythms of energy during the day. And while I am wearing a blue between-seasons coat, a blue dress, blue tights and a blue and pink mixed coloured silk neckerchief, I try to establish a recognition value for the pedestrians and this picture should help me to force the pedestrians to create their own persuasion about me. I choose to observe the city not in a hidden way rather in a little bit more exposed artificial way, because in my opinion the micro-analysis - that at the same time directs attention to a dimension of reality that proceeds on the assumption that the world changes while one is observing it, is faster to realize than in the hidden form of observation.
At 7am the city is very empty, at 7:45am the students are in a hurry to get on time to their lectures, but the pupils are much more relaxed on their way to school. At 8:30am the city is empty again. At 9:30am the city starts to get more crowdy with a lot of relaxed people who have time to shop for the rest of the day, to meet others in the coffee-houses beside the pedestrian zones, or just mingle around for a chat. I realize that my wish to slow down the every day life habit of perception from the pedestrians to undermine the experiences of every day city life is not really needed for Pori - this city is one of the slowest cities I have ever visited. At 11:30am the people start to wonder what I am doing and they recognize me again and again. At 2:30pm I encounter different types of eye-contacts, at 3:30pm I realize that the first people are on the way back home from work, at 5pm I got different face-expressions even from bus-drivers and car drivers on the road. At the same time the training staff from the university is now in a hurry to get the train back home. The city is empty again at 6:00 pm.
This project is based on and against my own biological rhythm at the same time. Personally I would not work before 10am, but for the creation of an open space for encountering, I have to use the timing of the city and not my own. After three hours I feel tiered and I realize that it is much more harder for me at this moment to stay inside and outside at the same time with my conscious sensory awareness or so to speak my tension towards the pedestrians. After 45 minutes it feels much more lighter and the concentration comes back. This project is based at the right time in the right city for me. The exposed observation, with just a few changes in my own behaviour feels very right for the size of a city like Pori. This form might not work in bigger places. Inside the 9th hour of duration the same low point of concentration than in the morning comes back. The last two hours were again very happily for me and I could open up again for different moments of short-time encounters. I realised that at the end of the day two independent ladies were focusing on me and start to open the mouth as if they want to ask or say something, but both retract immediately.
In this moment I am totally insecure of how to couch all the small and very different encounters of the day - is it actually possible to find words and if I try to explain it, isn't it just my view - the pedestrians might have complete different lived experiences in and from this moment of encountering. Is it even necessary to know exactly what everyone's thoughts are about?
