Meet the Artist: Claudia Zeiske
Remembering Together: Aberdeenshire have appointed their artist to co-create memorials with communities. Meet Claudia Zeiske.
Claudia Zeiske is a curator and cultural activist who combines her experience in social engagement with her walking art practice.
She was the founding Director of Deveron Projects where the ‘town is the venue’ rather than a gallery or arts centre. Coming from Social Anthropology, she has worked here with over 100 artists from all over the world on co-curated projects of community concern; developing a unique curatorial practice based on a balanced approach between artistic criticality and community involvement.
Today she is developing her free-lance practice Place/Art/Folk. With a focus on creating friendships, she employs people & place specific cultural practices such as cooking, eating together and walking.
Claudia says:
“My participatory way of working combines social engagement and walking art. I do this through my art practice Place/Art/Folk bringing People and Places together through ephemeral cultural practices such as walking, cooking and eating together.
Covid has - and still is - affecting us all. There are many memories to share, stories to tell. Taking inspiration from Aberdeenshire born community planner Patrick Geddes’ Valley Section, my idea is to undertake participatory art-walks from Mountain to Sea criss-crossing Aberdeenshire. Starting from the top of Ben MacDui, Aberdeenshire’s highest point I will walk to Peterhead one of the county’s seaports, passing Ballater – Geddes’ birthplace – and many other smaller and larger populated places.
Every day of the 200km stretch I will have some co-walkers from the place visited, to allow for discussion and understanding of the place and its people.
Eating together is a great leveller. En route, I will curate community meals - dinners, breakfasts or lunches - in each of the places. Those will bring together a range of people from different walks of life: from walking groups, to care homes, coffee morning attenders to school children, from WRI groups to fish factory workers. Walking allows for a kind of thinking in movement, encouraging contemplation and exercise at the same time. Taking walking as a starting point, my co-created and co-curated ‘monument’ could be an Aberdeenshire long-distance path, or a network of paths. Moving sites, where people can contemplate and remember. Where they can build up their physical and mental strength. “
“The opportunity to develop a contemplative long-distance walk from Mountain to Sea is a unique opportunity to bring people and place together through Aberdeenshire’s great thinker Patrick Geddes idea of the valley section.”