NIGHT WALKS WITH TEENAGERS

Public art project organized with Mammalian Diving Reflex and The Institute of Walking. Two groups of teenagers, one from Inverness and the other from the neighbourhood of Parkdale in Toronto led public walks at night, in and around the town of Inverness, on Cape Breton Island.

Walking Together at Night

 On August 14th, 2003, shortly after 4 pm, a major power failure paralyzed the province of Ontario and eight U.S. states. In Toronto, for almost 24 hours, subways and streetcars shut down, and lights, elevators, cash registers, refrigerators, televisions, and air conditioners stopped working. Hundreds of thousands of people walked across the city to get home, or took to the streets to escape their dark houses and apartments. Strangers took it upon themselves to direct traffic, and shopkeepers handed out free ice cream to passersby. As night fell, the city was thrown into darkness, revealing a sky full of stars and planets rarely seen from downtown Toronto for more than a century, and strangers struck up conversations with one another. As Darren O’Donnell describes it, during the blackout normal rules of the city ceased to apply, and countless new and unexpected exchanges and encounters occurred. He suggests that the absence of power enabled people to think about their civic roles and responsibilities in different ways, and to form new relationships with people they knew and strangers alike.

In Night Walks with Teenagers, a new project presented by Darren O’Donnell and Mammalian Diving Reflex, “The Torontonians”, a group of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds from Parkdale, a neighbourhood in Toronto, and “The Invernessers”, a group of teenagers of the same age from Inverness, Cape Breton, are organizing a series of walks at night, which are open to everyone, in areas in and around the town of Inverness. The Torontonians have never been to a place like Inverness, but they know how to breakdance, have performed at theatre festivals, and like to hang out with other people their own age. The Invernessers are into their hometown, enjoy listening to heavy metal, and know exactly what to do when there’s a power outage. Together, these two groups will lead three walks on the nights of August 18th, 19th and 20th: one along the ocean, one in the town of Inverness, and one in the forest. They’ve already been talking to each other over Facebook and e-mail, to get to know each other and to figure out what the experience will be like.

Many of us are fearful of being out at night, especially walking around in the woods. The prehistoric origins of this anxiety lay in specific dangers, such as predators or enemies. Over time, these real risks were replaced by generalized fears and superstitions. For example, in the 17th century, many writers described the night as being the descent of evil spirits or noxious vapours, which made people susceptible to sickness, death, or spiritual corruption. To protect themselves against the night air, people closed their windows and sealed up their bedchambers, ironically preventing the circulation of fresh air and creating ideal conditions for the spread of illness. And at night, it is often hard to distinguish between different forms, such as a tree and a person, or between something imagined and something real. As a consequence, the night has always been a repository for the supernatural and the unexplainable, a place where the imagination runs wild.

Despite such firmly rooted anxieties, the night has also enabled us to reflect on our place in the universe. For philosophers and scientists, the night made it possible to chart both space and time. In the Ancient World, shepherds as well as navigators would have been adept at reading the stars. However, with the rise of modern cities and the widespread use of electric lighting, there came a changed relationship with the night, and with it a shifting sense of our place in the world. Streetlamps and electric lights enabled an extension of daytime activities, but they also cut off our relationship with the celestial realm. On a cloudless night in the country, when the moon is little more than a narrow sliver and the constellations form a bright, milky band across the night sky, it is possible to grasp an understanding of time and space that is far more vast than one’s mortal experience.  Not having these celestial bearings would have been a profound change for many rural people who migrated into cities in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Throughout history, the night has also facilitated the transformation of social hierarchies, and has offered a place of temporary freedom for many people, including servants, slaves, and others confined to drudgery during the day, as well as an opportunity for members of privileged classes to step outside of their social roles. In the contemporary city, the night is an escape, to bars, nightclubs, and other places only open at night that offer community, meaning, and temporary respite from work and social conventions. Outside of work and ordinary public conduct, the night provides a sphere where markers of social position and class can be transformed. This shift in social power, where conversations can occur between groups that might not otherwise speak to each other, is crucial to the meaning of Night Walks.

Walking at night demands a calculated reorientation of your senses. Without familiar visual cues, such as depth or colour, it’s necessary to rely on touch, hearing, and smell, to feel your way through shadows, to listen with your skin, and to see with your imagination. When the visible details of your surroundings are hidden by night, other senses are heightened. You become keenly aware of gravel under your feet, cold air coming from a hollow in the ground, mist lying low in a meadow, or ferns glowing in the moonlight. For those who have learned how to quell their fears and navigate the darkness, the night becomes its own vast continent, where they can wander, reflect, and talk to their companions, inventing new stories, rituals, and communities. Through walking and conversing together, the landscape takes on meaning and comes alive in new ways.

Night Walks brings together people from communities who might not otherwise ever meet each another, to share experiences entirely unique to a place and time. The Torontonians are from a neighbourhood with one of the highest concentrations of new immigrants anywhere in Canada. Their families are from nations that include Sri Lanka, Tibet, and China. For many of the teenagers from Inverness, their families immigrated to Canada centuries ago. Night Walks invites us to consider what we might learn from one another, and how we might find our bearings together in the dark.

by Amish Morrell

 Notes:
Darren O’Donnell (2004), Social Acupuncture (Toronto: Coach House Books), pp. 95–95.
Roger Ekirch (2005), At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company), pp. 12–13 & 233.