Walking About: Becca Wood, The Public Stand

Meet at the bottom of Racecourse Parade in Avondale to walk and share stories.

Artist Becca Wood invites you to join her at the edge of Avondale Racecourse for the first walk of The Public Stand series. Over the course of the walk she will create space for participants to share stories and experiences of the Racecourse. The stories shared will influence the shape of the following walks.

The Public Stand is a series of choreoauratic walks that bring attention to the uncertainty of what lies before the Avondale Racecourse - these community events reimagine lost and forgotten stories, and present and possible futures. Through walking with and listening to the site’s histories, this series reimagines lost and forgotten stories, and present and possible futures. As a collective, this community walks together and apart, going nowhere in particular, navigating social distancing and walking towards the unknown.

Having presented previous works on sites and in buildings that are in a state of disrepair or uncertainty, Wood continues to raise consciousness of threshold spaces and the forgotten stories of our cities. ‘Slowing down to listen, the sounds sink inwards to the middle of me... Slowing down my pace in the cityscape in order to make visible the hidden spaces, lost landscapes, - feeling the shadows cross me, the back streets… the voice of the street – this part of this, or part of us?’

Becca Wood has been working in performance practices that slip between bodily, spatial and digital environments for the past 23 years. Previous works have involved participants as instructed performers exploring sites in response to pre-recorded sound tracks and spatial arrangements. To describe this practice she coined the term ‘choreoauratics’. It fuses choreography and sonic investigations with philosophies of listening, the body, place, digital technologies and sociality. Choreoauratic events intervene in public spaces, working poetically towards a recovery of the imperceptible and the disappearing.

Walking about is a series of performative and participatory walks that travel across Auckland with Te Hau ā Uru – the West Wind. The walks are artworks – guided experiences leading audiences and participants across Auckland. Its walks-as-artworks follow stories, pathways of the imagination and the senses, awa (rivers) and maunga (volcanic hills), uncovering the hidden trajectories of our urban and bush terrain.

Using seasonal and astronomical calendars the walks will spread across the year beginning in Mahuru (September) 2019 as the pīpīwharauroa begin to sing for spring and finishing in Aponga (August) as winter blows its last gusts.

Walking about is presented by Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in partnership with curators Christina Houghton and Melissa Laing. It has received support from Auckland Council and the Whau Local Board.