Walk With Us

Living in London and Chicago, we are sisters who have been collaborating for nearly one year: meeting, talking, and seeing where our conversations lead us. We invite you to join us, wherever you are in the world – for a walk together – let’s get up, take steps, and go. The duration of our walk will be 30-minutes (more or less) on Sunday 6th February (see your time zone below).

We propose this action to generate hope. You can walk anywhere, indoors around the home, or open the door and follow your feet where they take you, alone or in groups, urban or rural.

“Feel alive, experience connectedness, wholeness. Wake up, make notes with your feet, into the flow with curiosity. Step into wonder.”*

Set your alarm and join us in your time zone:

8am Los Angeles
10am Chicago
11am Montreal
4pm London
6pm Riga
9.30pm Mumbai
12am Beijing (7th Feb)

Share your experiences on social media: let us know what you find, do, see, write or draw!

* Poem inspired by Snowber, C. (2019) 'Living, Moving, and Dancing: Embodied Ways of Inquiry', in Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. New York: Guilford Press, pp 247-266.

Walk With Us is part of Refugia, a Walking Art Project by Esi Eshun for Five Years, London. Eshun writes: “Encompassing a series of walks taking place in dispersed locations at different times during January and February, it will enable us to seek out, encounter, circumnavigate, retread or constitute potential sites of communion with other human and more-than-human assemblages. Walking alone or in groups, through urban, rural, technical-infrastructural, coastal, derelict and ancient landscapes and environments, the participants will be asked to consider what routes might be taken to traverse spatial and temporal boundaries, protective and exclusionary zones, geophysical and cultural matter, private and public spheres, embodied and psychic states, to become, in the process, collective agents of change and resurgence at a time of unique pressure and duress.”

Over the last year, I have been collaborating with my sister Andra Kalnins, meeting, talking, and seeing where our conversations lead us. On the 6th February 2022 we invited our community to Walk With Us – part of Refugia, a walking art project by Esi Eshun for Five Years.

We proposed a synchronous walk that resonated with many: over 165 people walked with us (adults, children, 11 dogs and 1 horse). They joined us from the UK (London, Wales), USA (Illinois, California, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maine, South Carolina, Texas, Colorado, Washington) Canada (Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, New Brunswick), Latvia (Rīga and Ādaži), Denmark (Copenhagen), Finland, Netherlands, Italy, and Australia.

Thank you for sharing your experiences on social media. Please join us again next time. Hope moves to action.