The workshop Counter Gestures: Drifting, Marking, Echoing happened in collaboration with the Saigon-based urban space lab Officine Gặp.
It invited participants to explore the city not only as a physical environment but also to pay attention to it as a layered space of urban imaginaries; constantly reshaped by dreams, expectations, and subtle negotiations of identity and belonging.
The workshop emerged from my ongoing research project Fixing on the Verge of Disappearance, which traces the life cycles of images in urban spaces, focusing on those that have degraded or transformed through light, weather, and time. Building on this research and the accumulation of sun-degraded images, the workshop invited participants to engage with the city and its (im)material layers through wandering, observing, listening, and responding to their surroundings with light-sensitive materials.
,Dérive [literally: “drifting”], is a practice introduced by the French Situationists, and describes a rapid passage through varied ambiances.It involves a playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, which makes it quite different from the classic notions of a journey or stroll. The streets are investigated, the participants compose their own routes. Using walking as a performative tool for research and an act of creating and re-imagining space, combined with the cyanotype process as a method to engage with everyday objects and traces, we explored the city’s „subconscious“: Collecting imprints of passengers, making notes on fleeting sounds, drawing notations of movements. Through this hands-on approach, participants examined how images emerge and disappear through exposure and environment, reflecting on visibility, presence, and material change.
Image credits of workshop documentation: Afra Rebuscini and Yuri Frassi. Cyanotype works were created by the workshop participants.