HAMILTON PERAMBULATORY UNIT

ABOUT HAMILTON PERAMBULATORY UNIT (HPU)

The Hamilton Perambulatory Unit is a group of artists, writers and educators, co-founded in 2014 by Donna Akrey, Taien Ng-Chan and Sarah E. Truman. The HPU orchestrates participatory events to engage with historical and current ideas around perambulation, and to explore walking in conjunction with artistic practices and research-creation. Our methodologies have included stratigraphic cartography, locative media experimentation, sensory synesthesia poetry-writing, and found material sculpture-making. HPU has given walks in Montreal, Toronto, Windsor, Buffalo NY, Sydney Australia, London England, Galway Ireland, Memphis TN, Tokyo Japan, the online sphere of Zoom, and our home base of Hamilton Ontario.

Walking as a method of gaining knowledge is not new. The Peripatetic School meandered under the trees to learn Philosophy under the tutelage of Socrates and Aristotle; Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote about walking in "Confessions" and "Reveries of a Solitary Walker"; Henry David Thoreau wrote the essay "Walking" in 1862; and the avant-garde Situationists' idea of dérive challenged the rise of consumerist spectacle. These examples show the long history of walking as a method of generating ideas, art, and critique. HPU is an ongoing collaboration with like-minded individuals to explore, experiment, and engage with such historical ideas around perambulation, as well as with current concepts and artistic practices.

Walk!
Join the spectacle.
Hear! Observe open-minded. Feel!
Ponder and wander. Create!
The infinite investigation.