1000 A4 washi cosmos squares, 2023
Part of URBAN WALKS Goethe-Institut East Asia
Concept and curation design – Studio GROSS
Digital documentation design – Kitasenju Design
Vehicle design – GROUP
Intervention Artist – Chloe Paré, Maurizio Cirillo
Graphic Design – Sumire Kobayashi
Reading, translation of Burkhardt’s text: Masamichi Tamura

“Spaziergänge in der Stadt / Urban Walks” presents seven artistic projects that use digital support to turn walking in (urban) space into an artistic-aesthetic experience. Present, future and past narratives of places and their people are taken up. Through a digital platform, the local art experiences can be experienced by audiences in other places.

PARK-PLATZ creates temporary public space. By re-appropriating parking lots in a local neighbourhood in Tokyo, the project aims to initiate placemaking. PARK-PLATZ creates opportunities to linger in public space, sit and rest, mingle and chat, exchange and take the time to perceive our urban environment.  PARK-PLATZ refers to a series of walking-based research conducted in the seminar “Strollology – Perception and Traffic” in 1992/1993 at the University of Kassel, Germany. This year, thirty years later, we want to bring one of their ideas to Tokyo.

Tokyo has a unique urban morphology where numerous houses belong to individuals. At first glance, a village-like structure with the potential for community. But as public space is limited, neighbours long for opportunities to stay connected with each other. With a common strategy of turning empty private plots into parking lots, the urban fabric loses the chance of placemaking.

Through “1000 A4 washi cosmos” squares we playfully accumulate our spatiotemporal awarenesses while strolling in URBAN WALKS Tokyo. The participants are invited to weave together a plateau, a system that, during the successive act, cobwebs the entropies of subjectivities. The installation grows with visual, tactile, kinesthetic, spatial and architectural discoveries.