The walk online

admin on January 30, 2016

How to follow and join the walk. 

live.

without walking!

logosmall-with-border.jpg

  1. if you have a twitter account log in… if not,no worries!
  2. go to Social Hiking  http://www.shareyouradventure.com/
  3. Social Hiking will ask you to log in in via twitter so click the log in with twitter button. …. thats all you have to do, if you dont have a twitter account it still looks the same but you wont be able to interact so easily:
  4. you will see 3 columns
  5. on the left column, Latest Maps, when the walk is live on 4 and 5 Feb, you will see the current walk with the WalkNow icon and the word LIVE on it, probably at the top of the column
  6. click on the name of the walk and you will see a new green screen showing the line of the walk with little blue icons if you click on them they will show tweets and links to other social media!
  7. Logged into Viewranger via twitter, the map will update and you will see the walk grow over each day, it may do that without being logged in. It will appear as two separate maps, day 1 and day 2. There will be peaks of activity mainly in the mornings, see times below. Please tweet/retweet/comment and encourage others to do so!
  8.  Check out this direct link to the walk on Thursday and this one for Friday

We will be using @walknowlive and @forcedwalks for the main twitter feed

Facebook: forcedwalks

other social media links will be bounced through twitter and facebook

please follow/share/like etc,

use and check out the following #tags  #honouringesther #walknow

you can also follow the walk by following me on Viewranger http://my.viewranger.com/user/details/277417

draft route map:  http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/ODAwODI=

Exhibition in Bath

admin on July 16, 2015

The exhibition of work from the Somerset walk is currently up and running in central Bath. In the first exhibition room we have curated a series of 10 panels using research and documentation from the walk. In the glass box there are ‘relics’ gathered by the walkers and in the alcove, the notebooks they kept on the walk.

Rm1 entry wide

The second room show a series of floor pieces. Each room has its own looped audio ambience forming a randomised mix of bird song, trudging feet and comments recorded on the walk. These sounds mix with the voices of tourists and their guides, buskers, abbey bells and city seagulls calls filtering in the open door. A unique audio experience in each room. Every hour on the hour the exhibition sound is silenced by the call of the shofar and the sound of one of the interventions is played as a memorial candle burns momentarily. At the end of the intervention the sounds return and the air is briefly tainted with the smell of burning.

rm2 done 5

An orchid blooms in the darkness, a resonance of the orchid farm supposedly operating from the site of the Waldeslust slave labour camp.

rm2 done

The light from the projection reflects into the installation room. A series of short films representing the experience of the walk are projected across the hall disappearing along the wall out to the door. Sometimes it seems like a walker has dissolved out of the film and into the world and sometimes it seems that an exhibition visitor disappears into the film. Across the digital divide.

projection walk down

On the corner of Abbey Street we look out on the Abbey, the Roman Baths and the ceaseless ebb and flow of tourists. This week is Bath Spa University Graduation week, students in gowns and proud parents getting their souvenir shots in front of Bath’s historic architecture. Strange and powerful juxtapositions.

The exhibition runs at 44 AD Gallery, Abbey Street, Bath until Sunday 19 July at 16.00

 

Remembering the march to Belsen

admin on February 16, 2015

The March from Waldeslust to Bergen-Belsen

Esther remembers….

We were told that the camp would be disbanded. And we marched. I don’t know whether anyone knew, maybe some, but the destination was Bergen-Belsen. But I remember, during that march, and even during times when I was taken out to work, and seeing little houses, and especially on that march, you know, red-roofed, pretty little houses, it was a very pretty little area where we were. And curtains, windows, lace curtained windows, and people peering out and staring.

And I often wondered what went on in their minds when they saw these so-called people were being marched in their concentration garb, and to me, I remember thinking, my this…the world like that exists? There is another world. That I used to be quite incensed when told after the war that the majority did not know what was going on. I don’t know. I just knew that people looked at us. Maybe they were not aware of everything that went on, but we were certainly in their midst.

I don’t know exactly how long the march lasted. But it was not one of the worst marches, because it did not take weeks. Hanover is quite near Bergen-Belsen.

…from Esther Brunstein’s testimony held at the Imperial War Museum

Honouring Esther …. draft for walking in April 2015

admin on July 29, 2014

Esther’s Walk in UK first draft.
On the basis of Esther Brunstein’s testimony and research to confirm locations Richard has plotted the route from the work camp near Hamburen to the death camp at Bergen Belsen.
“Using scribble map I was able to drag the line of that estimated route retaining shape, scale and orientation and drop it on to our chosen finish point in Bath. The line offered a starting point on the edge of Frome. I have now plotted a contemporary route on rights of way as close as possible to that historic route.”
Dragged and dropped estimated historic route is in red, contemporary route in green.

Tags remain on Bergen Belsen and Waldeslust near Hanover indicating the actual starting and finishing points of the route that Esther and a group of some 80 Polish Jewish women  were forced to walk in the depths of winter, February 1945.

http://scribblemaps.com/api/maps/images/450/450/2cp27cMdhF.png

The estimated route of the the walk from the slave labour camp to Belsen:

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=zG0FerrHE65o.k5kvqlATWHv0&w=640&h=480]

Our proposal is to undertake some personal and collective acts of reflection, honouring and respect at the points where the historic route and the contemporary route intersect. We will encourage participants to mark this and share it in some way and subject to mobile signal our intention is that some of this will be networked live via social media to those unable to make the walk. We will further gather and network at the end point.