| UNDOCUMENTED TRAILS (PARTICIPATORY PROJECT, 2009) |
Undocumented Trails is a project by Simona Sofronie, Thomas Laureyssens and Tina Bastajian.
The first iteration of project saw the light during the GeoTales workshop at iMal with Esther Polak.
The Undocumented Trails project will set up a marketplace where the public can contract undocumented workers through a documention process. This process seeks to exchange points of urban experiences between citizens and un-documented workers.
The work that will be traded is atypical: the workers need to walk every single street in a defined zone of Brussels with a GPS track logger. Upon the return from their trip, the GPS data is visualised and evaluated, so that at the end of the festival the entire map of central Brussels will be colored meticulously. Walked routes are negotiated, traversing zones of mutual engagement – underscoring and stimulating a space for empowering working conditions. The streets and the visualized tracks become a testing ground to accentuate issues of documentation and migrancy, literally leaving a ‘paper trail’.
The absurdity of the work is a provocation that enlists workers, festival attendees and passersby to activate and contribute to this collaborative and détourned micro-economy.
Klein Kasteeltje / Petit Chateau - refugee centre in Brussels. Undocumented workers linger outside.
The concept: Coloring a zone by walking every street.
Recruiting the participants: encountering undocumented workers.
Defining the zones, explaining the concept.
Simona showing the GPS logger.
Reviewing the walk with the undocumented worker, using Google Earth
The notes Mohammed took while walking.
Visualisation of the walked tracks in map software.