Wayfinding Elsewhere
Wayfinding Elsewhere was a site specific project created with the Elsewhere Collective in Greensboro, NC. The project was designed to chart changing emotional needs through a participatory experience. April 2014.
Curator Jennie Carlisle writes the following about the project:
“Modeled loosely on youth scout clubs, Sclavi’s Wayfinding Club is dedicated to encouraging greater awareness of one’s bodily experiences and developing new cognitive strategies for spatial negotiation. Dressed in hand-embroidered neckerchiefs and collection clothing in the club’s color scheme participants sailed out on imaginative solo journeys through the open waters of the museum, departing from a mobile fabric fort Sclavi built as the club’s headquarters. After locating sites of emotional significance and marking them with geotags, they returned to the clubhouse to share tales of their adventures. Using methods of collaborative play, the club conducted exploratory research that queried the spatiality and temporality of emotions, the way emotions coalesce around or within particular places, and the lines of desire that inform our movement through space.In addition to hosting Wayfinding Club meetings for fellow Elsewherians, Sclavi held public club events at the Greensboro Children’s Museum and at Elsewhere. To encourage visitors to continue the club on their own, she installed a painted black board with instructions and materials in Katie Ford’s installation The Faraway (2013) on the first floor of the museum.”
Preliminary Sketches - research conducted on the Flaneurs, Situationalists, and the Wayfinding techniques of Polynesian explorers.
Tent Construction - made from reclaimed fabric and wood, DIY tent making techniques, handmade weight and stake system, rolls on wheels.
Wayfinders Club - Attendees created maps of their interior journeys based on instinct, and then choreographed a dance to accompany them. Later, with embroidered “geotag” patches in hand, explorers wandered the collection following their inherent desires, and left patches in desired locales. The Wayfinders Club had one pop-up day at a local Greensboro Community Center, where children experienced this concept of emotional exploring.
Hand Embroidered “Geo Tags” - After the project ended, I left the patches on a wall installation inside Elsewhere Collective with directions for participants to lead their own journeys of the spirit. Here are some of the images I received from the hashtag #wayfindingelsewhere on Instagram.
