Doung Anwar Jahaanger’s City Walk Analysis

I was given the task of capturing Doung Anwar Jahaanger’s “City Walk”. To be able to understand how to capture something like this, I will be looking at exactly what the City Walk is, how it has functioned and the ideas surrounding it before going into my argument of how it should be captured, recorded and displayed.

Doung Anwar Jahaanger is a Mauritian-born architect and artist living in Durban. He has tried to broaden his idea of architecture and focuses very much on the idea of space, he believes in “A space that unites rather than walls that divide – an architecture without walls” (Jahaanger n.d.). Jahaanger started the City Walk initiative in 2000 when people began to tell him where he shouldn’t walk, they spoke about areas of the city being dangerous and in a way began to condemn them, setting up mental walls and boundaries. When he began to walk through those areas he was surprised, he began to engage with the city and the people in it, they were open and spoke to him and when he came back the next day they remembered his name. His walk thought the city has since evolved, it is now one of dala’s initiatives and walks have taken place in Johannesburg, London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

Sean O'Toole, a Johannesburg based writer and the editor of ArtThrob.co.za stated that “the Citywalk is simply a long winding walk through Durban. The walk starts in Cato Manor, an informal settlement known for its role in the 1949 Indian-African riots, the 1959 beer hall riots and the 1960 massacre of nine policemen. It ends on Durban's beachfront promenade”(O’Toole 2004). However the City Walk becomes more than just a simple walk through the city, it is a freeing and enlightening experience, it is about looking both looking deeply at y...

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... walk. He is asking people to change how they would normally do things, walk through the city and begins to experience something and change the way they perhaps saw the city before, Jahaanger hopes that the people who join his walk will begin not just to look but to see.

Bibliography

Abraham, I. A. 2012, Architecture Without Walls, accessed 29 April 2014 ,

Jahaanger, D. A. 2014. accessed 28 April 2014,

Jacob, M. J. 2006. Making Space for Art. In P. Marincola. What Makes a Great Exhibition? Philadelphia: Philidelpia Centre for Arts and Heritage, pp:134-141.

O’Toole, S. 2004, Walk Don’t Drive, accessed 29 April 2014 ,< http://art-south-africa.com/archives/archived-featured-articles/212-main-archive/archived-featured-articles/1532-walk-don039t-drive.html >