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Elspeth Penfold

Elspeth Penfold

(United Kingdom)

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Elspeth (Billie) Penfold (MRBS FRSA) is a textile artist who combines walking, weaving and performative storytelling. Billie uses hapticity and psychogeography to explore narratives. She hand spins ropes which are knotted by participants as part of performative events.
In 2014, Billie formed a group called Thread and Word that delivers funded arts based projects through performed poetry. Through this group Billie uses digital media, sound and locative mapping to create hybrid, in person and digital walking events. Billie’s approach to multi-layered storytelling is influenced by her Andean background. Her practice allows for many voices, moving away from a linear view of the world and avoiding a linear interpretation. In 2020 Billie’s Thread and Word project ‘A Different Lens’ was awarded an honourable mention at the international festival Soundwalks September. Billie has just completed her MA in Creative Events Management at Falmouth University.
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pedestrian acts

By de Certeau: In “Walking in the City”, de Certeau conceives pedestrianism as a practice that is performed in the public space, whose architecture and behavioural habits substantially determine the way we walk. For de Certeau, the spatial order “organises an ensemble of possibilities (e.g. by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g. by a wall that prevents one from going further)” and the walker “actualises some of these possibilities” by performing within its rules and limitations. “In that way,” says de Certeau, “he makes them exist as well as emerge.” Thus, pedestrians, as they walk conforming to the possibilities that are brought about by the spatial order of the city, constantly repeat and re-produce that spatial order, in a way ensuring its continuity. But, a pedestrian could also invent other possibilities. According to de Certeau, “the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform or abandon spatial elements.” Hence, the pedestrians could, to a certain extent, elude the discipline of the spatial order of the city. Instead of repeating and re-producing the possibilities that are allowed, they can deviate, digress, drift away, depart, contravene, disrupt, subvert, or resist them. These acts, as he calls them, are pedestrian acts.

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