‘Walk with me’ is a new work in progress by kioskxiaomaibu & homeshop, linking a route in Cologne with a route in Beijing and invites your comments and suggestions.

This project shares with previous ones (kioskxiaomaibu 2010 & Through the Looking Glass 2011) the objective of providing a platform for the exchange of local knowledge: a knowledge that thanks to modern technology can now be compared, discussed and reflected on by locals in the street across geographical distances.

A sequence of open discussions around a number of associated questions are set up in 2012, beginning with

1) Open lunch at Betahaus,Cologne: 14^th June, 12.30  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGlqS3hlbm4yQm54QVE2WDJsdjRJamc6MA

2) Sustaining Regional Futures, Global Conference organized by RSA, UK and Peking University of Sciences at Beijing Convention Centre, 23^rd-25^th July 2012 (supported by Goethe Institute)

TOPIC:    How can we value and engage with the life of a locality?

1. What practices exist to make visible and validate local knowledge?
2. Is there a new space for reflection and exchange that employs imaginative and cross cultural methodologies?
3. Can we compare ‘a Western mode of thinking in models’ (Francois Jullien) to an embodied and tactile mode of knowing?
4. How does the experience of site made by my socially constituted body compare to the experience of site made by a body accustomed to another social environment?

Petra Johnson, artist (www.kioskxiaomaibu.org)

‘Landscape has undreamed potential for public spaces of infinite variety’

Brinckerhoff Jackson