MATAKANA WALKWAY
Making a path draws a borderline through a multiplicity. It gives an edge, divides an assemblage and starts us down the long meridian of the two. Walking a pathway is to occupy the borderline and observe a single condition as parted, like the Red Sea. Not only are there two sides, but there are two ends (an end may be another beginning, as in Borges' Garden of Forking Paths).
Two rural towns: one a small out-of-the-way settlement on a tidal estuary full of fish, the other in a long-farmed valley rich with volcanic and alluvial soils. The proposal is for a walkway that links these localities across 8 kilometers of diverse geographies, histories and agrarian land use patterns. A series of wayfinding markers was devised, to be set at regular intervals along the trail. Concrete and steel, they are etched with diagrams, toponymies, significant dates and other local information. The markers invite walkers to consider the complex natural and social landscape systems they encounter on their way from the green inland valley to the broad river flats on the Pacific coast of Northland New Zealand.
[Matakana Walkway is a project developed under the aegis of UFO Bureau, an international art and design research consortium].