Artist Becca Wood invites you to join her at the edge of Avondale Racecourse for The Public Stand, an audio guided walk through the Racecourse grounds, which takes place as part of the performance series, About walking.

Download the audio track at aboutwalking.nz and bring your headphones

The Public Stand is a choreoauratic walk that brings attention to the uncertainty of what lies ahead for the Avondale Racecourse. Wearing headphones, the participants tune in towards their moving bodies, the site, the disappearing the unseen and the unspeakable. 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, the audience walks together towards the unknown.

This walk will be offered as a group experience at Alert level 1 and 2 starting at 3:30 pm, and as a staggered solo experience at Alert Level 3 or 4 starting between 2:30 and 4:30 pm.

We will provide you with a time slot and further details in the week before the walk. [Updates will be announced at aboutwalking.nz and on Te Uru’s social media pages.]

Becca Wood has been working for the past 23 years with performance practices that slip between bodily, spatial and digital environments. Previous works have invited participants to be active performers, exploring sites in response to pre-recorded soundtracks, instructions and spatial arrangements. To describe this practice, Becca 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.

About walking 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 Whiringa-ā-rangi (November) 2020 as the Puawananga (Clematis) begin to flower

About walking is presented by Te Uru in partnership with curators Christina Houghton and Melissa Laing. It has received support from Auckland Council and the Whau Local Board.