Line – Off – Line

Line – Off – Line

2020
Performative drawing walk
Duration: 60 minutes
Material: paper phones, mobile phones, graphite pencils, sandglass, suitcase, socks, participants and large map
Zone2Source, Amstelpark, Amsterdam(NL)
part of the exhibition Mind Your Step
concept: Liesje van den Berk
photo’s by: Tom Janssen

Step-by-step, line-by-line, everything is possible on a blank paper. Exit your comfort digital bubble and leave your phone behind. Feel, see, smell, hear and experience with your pencil on this drawing walk.

In the performative drawing walk “Line – off – line” we enter into a dialogue with the Amstelpark and each other through drawing actions. Anything is possible on white paper. Exit your comfort digital bubble and leave your phone behind. Feel, see, smell, listen and experience with your pencil on this drawing walk.

This performance is a counter-reaction to telephone use in our current society. We hold our phone like a precious object. Less conversations or open friendly looks when we are on the road, just desperately staring at the phone looking for contact elsewhere. Where are we? Our phones enable us to inhabit multiple worlds and realities at the same time… but are we still really HERE?

In this walk, Liesje van den Berk asks the participants to temporarily replace their telephone for a blank paper telephone and graphite pencil to walk and draw in silence and concentration in the Amstelpark. During the walk Liesje gives specific sensory drawing instructions. Drawing becomes a way to actively experience the richness of one’s environment, and to truly connect. By sharing drawings, Liesje creates a dialogue between the participants about their environment. Slowly the individuals become a group. At the end, the participants share one of their drawings on a map of the Amstelpark. These drawings are left behind in the Amstelpark to show a part of the walk, a memory of a moment, to the other visitors of the park.