The velocity of vulnerable

I had a first date today that lasted for 70km. We were introduced before, but only in passing. I dared not look too closely for fear of growing attached when we were first together, but after EFT confirmation pinged my inbox, I was glued to every aged detail. From the distinctive swirl of the Campagnolo embossing to the scuffed remnants of racing days gone by. A beauty.

This is Tuareg my very own vintage, South African built, steel frame road bike. We got to know each other today and I do believe we are a match. Tuareg is an Arabic term meaning 'paths taken', a name given to the nomadic tribes of the Sahara Desert. The root word used by these people groups when referring to themselves (both men and women) translates as 'freemen'. Entirely appropriate for the rebirth of this crafted bicycle to take on the gnarled desolation of the Karoo while whispering to a bullet-proof perseverance I found where Arabic first began.  

It is fascinating to note that the women of the Tuareg enjoy a degree of freedom seen as rare to the majority of Islamic cultures. Worth investigating in depth.
With just 12 days to go until the first Cape Town Freedom Ride, to be held on Women's Day, I have been more carefully considering how urban design and the bicycle are serving the furthering of women's rights in our culture today. We speak of freedom, emancipation and opportunity, but what does it mean in real terms for a woman to be on a bicycle.

Here is my simple story from today.

After riding for 3 hours today through almost every urban condition our city has to offer, I was elated and exhausted. Lung squeezing climbs, and bladder squeezing 60km/hr descents(!) left me feeling utterly spent but not once, not for a single moment, did I feel vulnerable. I received the usual amount of sexist jeering, surprised double-takes and occasional flirtatious greeting by my two wheel mounted male counterparts. Amusing but never threatening.

I showered and changed when I got home from my glorious ride, heading out for dinner and the Tour de France finale at a friend's house just two blocks away.
I walked.
It was then that I realized anew, the power of the bicycle. The weight of the vulnerability I felt when traveling so slowly and deliberately was visceral. My diminished travel speed and sluggish options available as a pedestrian in danger are so contrasting with the flexibility and dynamism of the bicycle I had enjoyed for the day.

As women, we are faced with the frighting, cold and concealed question when venturing out.
Not if, but when will that moment be when we are called to defend ourselves.
That gnawing question is wholeheartedly stifled every-time I head out on my bicycle.
Call it training, call it commuting.

I call it freedom.
الطوارق

That which is immeasurable

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of urban design is for me is to give expression to that which is difficult to quantify. How do you measure vulnerability, joy, claustrophobia or solitude? 
City spaces inscribe these into our very being, yet in order to make spaces that heighten and evoke, these concepts must be quantified, contained, described and ultimately scrutinized at a budget meeting usually so mundane, that it too cannot be measured.

So, here is some delicious poetry as a necessary departure from a pragmatic dogmatic systematic hepatic system where the heart of the city has been muted and those who inhabit its streets stand petrified by change. 
Written as one does of love. 


Oh city, my aching contradiction
Your beauty is a hushed sentiment I encourage 
every time I close my eyes
Your solitude overwhelms me with the stench of love unmade
You would have loved me if I were a soft spring rain, 
but I was born a hurricane, and I nearly died tying to be small.

Oh city, the kiss of water in my lungs
In creases and in dog-eared promises.
The night pressed in as though I alone was responsible for your shadow
How is it that you are composed of such absence

I searched the urban imagined to find respite from your charcoal gaze
Flawed celebrations invaded my quietest moments 
where your taste was most real
Walk with me. Speak to me of the ordinary
and whisper to me in the language of tormented cities

 

The Maker Place

I am so entirely inspired by the idea that a journey may be all-together too much to manage.  It will require an excavation, a creation and a fashioning of that which cannot be measured. 

It will become my maker place.

In two months time I will find myself in a place I fell in love with because it overflows an absence clutter by day and the primal magnificence of creation by night. The Karoo is one of South Africa’s treasures in its understated succulent diversity and hardship. It is essentially who we are. 

Elegant perseverance.

Photo and inspiration to ride by Stan Engelbrecht

Hundreds of kilometers of gnarled rock, gravel and time-hardened semi desert will roll out beneath the wheels of 40 vintage racing bicycles for the inaugural Tour of Arae. A 6-day stage race unveiling 730km of Karoo landscape and the antifragility of the South African frame.  This journey pays homage to the ‘Hero Era’ in cycling where participants in events were entirely responsible for their bikes, minds and strategy. En-route support was unknown and unwelcome. Jerseys were made of wool and riders were made of mettle.

This will be my first race. My first dance with machine and expectation.

On Arae, two things will become clear: the legacy of South African makers who have crafted machines of excellence, and the making of a steele of cycling camaraderie amongst participants that will add to the legacy of the sport.    

Preparation for what essentially amounts to 6 Argus tours ridden back-to-back is an unknown to me. I cannot waste energy wondering if it is even possible. I must set my mind to knowing that in its completion, I will be made. Taken apart, moulded and remade. As each component of my bicycle is being assessed, scuffed and reshaped in the workshop of a master frame builder, so too will I allow Arae to be my maker space.

When Francois du Toit and I ride alongside one another climbing up to Sutherland we will smile knowing that master building from racing machines to city streets are much the same – made with passion, to be fully enjoyed, entirely tested and then remade for new pleasures.

Can a journey ever be truly known?

It’s distance is but the skeleton upon which beauty is woven.


follow the making @contestedspaces 

Disrupt Yourself by Kirsten Wilkins [Pecha Kucha vol29]

PERMISSION GIVING

I’m Kirsten: urban designer and curious anarchist.

We live in a culture where anything out of the ordinary seems to require permission asking. At a dinner table it’s polite to ask May I have the salt. In the city it should be unnecessary to ask “may I feed the hungry” I’m here to ask you a simple question.

Why do you ask "MAY I ?"

 

DISRUPTION

What I am doing now is called disruption. I’m taking a commonly held idea or behavior (Business as Usual)  and questioning is validity, and application because its simply not serving us. I’m happy if you use the words disruption and rebellion interchangeably.

 

START HERE MAP

The reason I am standing here is because I drew a map. A colleague of mine was working on a project where the slew of permissions required are sure to tank the project before even begins. So I drew the start here map and we began looking spatially at where invitation to change the city outweighs the authorities ability to exact permission.

 

OPPRESSION

The opposite of permission is invitation and what our rather crude map revealed is that in areas of poverty inequality and injustice, the invitation to intervene is warm and unambiguous. Where the status quo is to be maintained, creative expression is kept docile by administrative burden. I am going to share with you two examples that makes this clear. 

 

IN THE CITY: NO ONE CARES

About a year ago, a Durban art critic and curator came to the city to understand what passers by thought of our public art. What better way to solicit conversation than that quintessential south African braai. And so food for thought was born. Of course once he sought permissions it all changedlets start with ‘open flame’!. Once permissions had been granted, this poor man found himself sufficiently far from any piece of art to neutralize the original idea, serving certified hallal sausages from a gas skottle only to be accosted by a passing protest because the only reason some man would randomly be serving free food in this manner would be to distract them from getting to parliament.

  

OUTSIDE THE CITY: EVERYONE DARES

Lets fast forward to a place of invitation. A place where those who are seen as agents of rebellion are now agents of change. The street artists, the skateboarders and a crazy botanist.  In a place of neglect, there is the desire to create a place of dignity and belonging.

A devastated river system every child’s playground, the city's backyard.

This is the Kuilsriver.

I’m involved in a rehabilitation project with local residents where we are looking to reorientation the manner in which this space is utilized and maintained. When I asked if they had permission, they pointed to the home of every surrounding resident explaining how much time and cost was being plowed in by each individual.  

ITS BEAUTIFUL HERE

             Albert Camus says this:

”The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with unity is also the procedure of rebellion” 

             In not asking for permission, we disrupt dysfunctional structure. To serve people. To serve justice. 

             We design a Beautiful Rebellion.

SIYABULELA

And there was Siyabulela on the steps of City Hall.. As an aspiring film maker, he is traveling around South Africa pasting up this somewhat gaudy plastic backdrop at various venues inviting artists and passers by to use his impromptu stage.

CREATING A STAGE FOR OTHERS

I myself had arrived at on my bicycle in the midst of an unsanctioned group ride through the city. I asked him if he had permission to be there, His answer was simple: by the time someone says yes, the artists would have left.

 Ironically I had been followed by police while riding and when we came to a standstill at City Hall they said nothing of Sibulela's taped on pop culture defacement. Not their department.

The cops and I used his stage as a negotiation space for my defiance.

DON'T SLEEP HERE

The danger in inappropriately asking MAY I is exactly that. We will miss the moment where life happens. Rather than incessant intellectualization and justification. We need to move to implementation of ideas. No more prohibitively expensive conferences and gala dinners to talk about poverty alleviation.

Take out your tape and Start here.

WDC 2014. This stage.

I always thought if there was a World Design Capital fringe movement, Id be at the helm. Inspite of all the excellence that has emerged thus far. The question that no one seems to be asking is what happened to all the projects that weren’t selected. Over 1200 design interventions. Entrepreneurial opportuniies and moments for collaborative potential were submitted. 400 odd were chosen and now only a fraction of those remain

Their in lies my greatest criticism of the yellow monster..

WDC2014 subjected an otherwise creative and organic design community to asking MAY I ?.

 

WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT

      What is your creative idea. Here is free hashtag. Don’t ask MAY I?  Start here.

THIS RAINBOW NATION

       Because...when yellow is over, we are going to need to dig deep. Intervene and be involved not because the world is watching, or because yellow is cool, but because we simply must.

Lets waste no time in permission asking, and needlessly seeking validation.

This is the heart of disruption. To refuse to accept this human condition - serve justice without adding further injustice. Less “I am” and more “we are”

Get out there and get it done.

             This sounds a lot like anarchy..or a disruption of anarchy.

   

[THE MASK]

This is THE call to action. To disrupt through empathy.

While these masks for me evoke images of protest and revolt, they are an invitation to look through the eyes of another. The eyes of Everyother. 

THE STOMACH
             Spend less so that you can give more.

Talk less so you can listen more

Get out of you car. Get out of your life

Live in moderation

Stop asking May I ?

Ask how much, mow much more, how far, why not, who else?

TALKING FROM BOTH SIDES

       As I conclude I wanted to say something about authority. I’m a parent of 3 young children. I have often found myself saying ‘because I say so’. Expecting compliance and setting strict rules. The most disarming moment for me in this authority is when I am asked not about the rules I have set but by the compass that guides them.

THE WAITING

             Stop asking for permission. Look for invitations.  

             Stop allowing action to be hijacked by meaningless debate.

             Ask the right questions first of yourself and then of others.

             Visit our open source led hub @75 Harrington Street find a way to get plugged into making change real.

DISRUPT YOURSELF

Start here.