Reading Response #3

I decided to respond to Kenny Cuper’s article, “Walking As Do-It Yourself Urbanism,” because I was fascinated by the project that was discussed by Cuper in this article. Cuper’s project consisted of three parts; a photographic essay, an urban intervention and a website to illustrate the “breathing spaces” of London, England. The photographic essay constituted an investigation through walking, much like the practices of Film 116 and our drifts, to find unique places of London Cuper refers to as “breathing spaces,” that could potentially provide an urban walker a place for him or her to chill-out.

The project functioned as such: Cuper would trek all throughout London to find these unique places, or “breathing spaces,” not often seen by the public and photograph them. Cuper then would turn these photographs into post cards and would distribute them on buses, subways, sidewalks, and coffee shops. This is where the “urban intervention” came in. On the back of these postcards were directions to help the individual find the exotic location of the photograph on the front. Also written on the back of these cards was a website, wheredoyoubreath.net, which was part of goal three of this project. The website contained an interactive map located a series of urban spaces accompanied with an image and a short description of the area. The website also encouraged visitors to include their own favorite locations of the city within the map and share an image and description of their own. This website allowed visitors to see each others own walking experiences.

Cuper did this to answer questions such as “in what ways are people stimulated to see urban space in alternative ways?” and “Can a city be transformed by imagination by looking at it or by walking it?”

This project is extremely relevant towards the projects conducted in this class because it encourages people to look at an urban environment differently, and to find nooks and crannies that often go overlooked within a crowded and clustered urban environment.