Perambulator (2012—)
By
Clare Qualmann
Baby Slow Marathon, Huntly, May 2014. Photo credit: Clare Qualmann
Perambulator is a project about walking with prams, pushchairs and buggies.
Perambulator is a walking project that explores and reflects on the experience of walking with a pram (or pushchair). A new radar evolves – seeking out the dropped kerbs and the ramps – avoiding steps, narrow gaps, awkward turns. Going the long way round becomes the norm, steering clear of particular places or particular routes because of their accessibility problems.
Viewing the city through this lens is political. Losing the freedom of easy mobility – a freedom that I hadn’t been aware of before – connects me to a massive group of people (predominantly women) in the same position, encumbered by wheels.
Perambulator is a project, an artwork, which makes visible these issues through a mass walking (with prams) through and around a specific place. Adaptable to pretty much any location it seeks to highlight the everyday issues, annoyances, awkwardness and roundabout requirements of pram pushing. I first made a version of the project at Lewisham art house in May 2012, followed by an extensive exploration of the town of Huntly, in North East Scotland in May 2014. We lived and worked in Huntly for a month, inviting pram users to share their walks with us, and organising a series of workshops and performances that discussed, explored, reflected on, and celebrated walking with prams.
In 2015 and 2016 Perambulator returned to a more personal scale through photographs and writing about different elements of pram use including naps, barriers, and leaving the pram behind. In 2018 we undertook a short residency in New York City conducting Perambulator drifts as part of the exhibition ‘S.T.E.P’ at Flux Factory, Queens.
Perambulator continues in a final phase in 2021 through a series of performances and photographs that record the negotiation of the cityscape with a pram.
More information: https://huntlyperambulator.wordpress.com
