Dr Chris Dooks
Interdisciplinary Artist
Three Artist Walks / Tours [2005-2009]
My earlier psychogeography and site-specific work used humour with slightly audacious claims about what people might be seeing in front of them. The intention was serious; to question surrounds, to renew space - especially for the exhausted.
Polyfaith [2005]
Polyfaith was a commissioned by Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. There was a bus tour, a publication, website and talks. This was a project that used the city of Edinburgh for multiple pilgrimages within a pseudo-interfaith narrative that featured a “dead physics teacher called Erica Tetralix”
I made a fairly convincing case that she had been a friend of mine and we were going to trace her life around the city.
All through a kind of hidden Edinburgh we travelled, traipsing around parts of the city with curious names, strange locations and the occasional moving story.
However, spoiler alert: At the end of the tour, it is revealed to the audience that her burial site (at Edinburgh Botanical Gardens) might not be what I claim it to be. Even though the audience had ‘bought’ most of the narrative thus far, which actually surprised me, I reveal that Erica Tetralix is a shrub in the gardens. Her Latin name tag is just a marker for the plant.
There has been no interfaith tour. On the bus tour, someone claimed they knew her and didn’t know she had died.
Edinburgh’s Select Avocados [2008]
launch microsite
Promoted by Edinburgh Art Festival (and was the opening event) in 2008, this was a tour of Edinburgh’s Advocate’s Close, which is situated off the city’s Royal Mile. I postulated there was an art movement called “The Avocados” and that this collective had made several works hidden within the cracks of buildings in the close. If you were a lexicographer it was easy to spot that “Select Avocados” was an anagram of “Advocates Close” - something I often did in my work at the time.
When the site when online after the live event I had a few people contacting me saying that the site had the occasional inaccuracy. They were usually aghast when I told them the whole thing was a fabrication and when they paid attention, they could see nothing is what it seemed. I still couldn’t believe my wild claims were being taken seriously and couldn’t work out if it was my personality or the so-called ‘artworks’ that were the persuading factor. Perhaps patronage and context – and trust in organisations was swaying people.
