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Text = A Generative Grammar of the Legs = {img:walker.jpg} → [Walking References] (work in progress) Mobile Conference on Walking Proposal by Kahve-Society, currently at a research and development stage. The aim of this conference is to address the historical and current interest in walking, with particular attention to projects that involve walking as critical and creative activity. The event is timely in reflecting considerable recent attention and interest in walking through urban space (from the popular work of Janet Cardiff in the Whitechapel area to current 'generative psychogeography' practices organised over the web) and thus aims to provide an understanding of its historical context and to represent current debate on walking as embodied, analytical and aesthetic practice, beyond its function as means of getting from A to B. Walking is not addressed as a mode of transport but as a continuous process of the renewal of ideas (hence the title). Walking animates the production of text, hence Christophe Bailly refers to walking as 'grammaire generative de jambes' (generative grammar of the legs). Walking is an expansive metaphor. It aims to draw together a range of ideas from this emerging inter-disciplinary field of inquiry: perhaps those particularly from architecture, social anthropology, cultural geography and history, urban sociology, tourism and the visual and performance arts. Participants will be required to become active agents in this process in a reflexive manner that dissolves the hard distinction between theory and practice in the spirit of the walking methodologist (evoking the work of Walter Benjamin). The tracing and making of urban text through walking inadvertently unsettles the notion of non-space (shopping malls, underpasses, airport lounges), and shifts the reading of these places into an economic geography, analysing the relationship between capitalism and space. Form: The plan is to generate discussion by programming a mobile conference between a number of café venues in the East End of London. In this way, conference materials will be presented through the activity of walking and as a result of walking between different locations, allowing short papers/presentations (and possibly parallel papers) to take place both in and between cafés. Furthermore, new live artwork will be commissioned and integrated into the overall structure of the conference, emphasising the mobile nature of this project and to generate fluid discussion (in transit). Of course, refreshments will also be served at regular intervals. Location: The proposed project will take place in the East End of London and will engage its audience in a physical reflection of spatial culture. In this way, issues embedded in the actuality of the East End of London will directly underpin the conference. The exploration of specific and generic geographies will address the spatialisation of people and history, recognising cultural, racial and class histories. Publication: It is hoped that a publication, or guidebook, will also be provided to draw together ideas and suggested routes. Thus, the project/event aims to deal with the formation of a discourse of walking that draws together diverse materials.