Night Walk for Edinburgh

I first discovered Janet Cardiff's work in 2018 in a class I took at NYU called "Community-Based and Site Specific Theatre." One early autumnal day, I took a trip to Central Park South, which is the starting point for Cardiff's Her Long Black Hair (2004). I believe I was so enraptured by the piece that I ended up using it as a primary source for a short essay on binaural/3D sound performance. This piece, unlike Night Walk for Edinburgh, is pure audio. It's as if you are listening to a podcast; the voice on the other end entirely foreign, yet familiar. In Night Walk for Edinburgh, Cardiff's sultry yet casual tone is still alien yet reminiscent of an old colleague-- like someone you know just well enough, but not entirely. For this walk, which is a collaboration between Cardiff and her frequent collaborator, George Bures Miller, they request you download an app and a film on that app before reaching your starting point. You'll be watching the film as you 'do' the sound walk, which you are also instructed to begin at dusk. This filmic addition was new to me and my experience of Cardiff's previous work. But, since 2004, much has changed. And of course, why should we not make use of the technology sitting in our pockets while we embark on this strange, solo sound walk?

*Some ‘onboarding’ before I begin the night walk…*

I'm already a bit sceptical of the addition of a screen to this type of experience. Thinking back on my experience in 2018, I vividly recall being astonished by the spatial audio technology and Cardiff's ability to create space and imaginary, surrealist worlds through the singular element of sound. Now, with image added (or rather, an audio-visual element), my attention is split. And I'm not sure that I like it.

And yet, I cannot ignore the fact that this is how I typically experience my urban spaces: phone in hand trying to navigate myself to my next stop, fiddling often with the fast forward arrow on my Apple Podcast app to zip past the ads for the episode I'm listening to currently. Or sometimes, I'm even texting or emailing 'on the go'. Cardiff and Miller curate an audio-visual story that accompanies and amplifies the raw, physical urban space of Edinburgh's old town. The audio implores you to explore the cracks and crevices within the town's many closes, down to the vents that are sprinkled along the sides of alleyways to the unique brickwork laid out hundreds - perhaps thousands - of years ago. The added audio-visual element is helpful at pointing directly to what the spectator should be investigating in that very moment.

Just as in Her Long Black Hair, this work is incredibly time-sensitive. Participants are advised to keep an appropriate pace, following along with the visual trail on the phone in front of them. Time is still carefully orchestrated, but the magic I felt in Her Long Black Hair has dissipated. Let me explain: in Her Long Black Hair, we are also advised to keep a pace in line with the pure sound of Cardiff's footsteps as she walks through midtown Manhattan. This gives the eerie feeling of walking alongside Cardiff. Or perhaps you are following her? Or she is following you? She is far off in the past, and even further now. And yet, you are together in this moment in time-- in whatever present you decide to begin this journey. This convention is still very present in Night Walk for Edinburgh: We meet several street performers, regular guests, the same cycle of tourists and rolling cases. There are those stuck in the past, on the screen in front of us, and there are those that are present now. Both experiences are true, both are present, but one is a view of a mediated past you are being seduced by, and another is a physical present you are being driven away from.

The most magical moments, for me, are the opportune connections between the past and the present. On the film, on that bench on the left hand side leading into the High Court of Justiciary, is a homeless person trying to sleep. In front of me is a different homeless person, trying to shelter themselves from the rain. In Tron Square on the film, two residents hang their washing. In Tron Square in real life, two different residents pass the washing lines, eager to get back home after a long week at work. I watch them carefully as they make their way back to their flats. Cardiff holds a picture up to the building on the film. People have been living here since World War II. In front of me, ordinary people, just like me, live here now.

My absolute favourite moment, however, would have to be when the audio-visual element 'fails'. The video has gone out, but that's okay. "Follow the sound of my voice," she urges. I drop the screen for a moment and feel a new kind of freedom. And there's also, perhaps, a bit of uncomfortability in being forced to look around, to look carefully, to stop and look and look again. I sit in the uncomfortable. So much has changed about the ease in which I lose myself in the experience of a sound walk. I can't tell if this is because Cardiff and Miller have given me an additional digital appendage to bear or if I've been walking this way all along. Either way, my experience of the city I've been living in for a mere two months has transformed. Cardiff and Miller have offered their audience a new way of seeing and experiencing this urban setting. But will the audience have the will and determination to take them up on their offer?

Night Walk for Edinburgh is available via Fruitmarket Gallery until 31 March 2025. You can find out how to experience the night walk here: https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/event/night-walk-for-edinburgh-2/

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