In March 2025 Dee Heddon and I travelled to Hamburg for the ‘New Perspectives on Walking Women’ conference at the University of Hamburg. Our contribution was a night walk that took participants on a route through hamburg, exploring the work of women walking at night and after dark through a series of texts, scores, and shared actions.
Each participant was given a guide to the walk, on one side with a ‘constellations of practice’ list including night walking artworks made by women artists, the phases of the moon, and the constellations of Cassiopeia and Andromeda (which would both be visible in the sky that night). On the other side the ‘constellations of practice’ continued, alongside a collection of quotes from night walking women, with key words including fear, thrills, danger, awe, intimacy, agency and freedom.
At the end of the walk we created a new constellation ‘The Sky Wanderers of Hamburg’ made up of stars named for inspiring women nominated by participants.
Clare Qualmann 