Hi, I’m Walker Tufts. My work explores our relationship to others (human and non-human) and the commons through games, kitchen renovations, exhibitions, dinner parties, and performances. I see play as a form of research equal to academic enquiry and a way to examine and dismantle the problematic assumptions often baked into Western scientific thinking. Recently I’ve focused on games with KOSMOLOGYM. Here you can find brief introductions to my projects. You can learn more at Camp Little Hope and Kosmologym.

Dirtball

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Dirtball is an invitation to a game that is always going on beneath our feet. The court invites you to join this soil making game along with birds, bugs, plants, minerals and weather.
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Plastic Dance

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With marble mazes and head mounted labyrinths Plastic Dance explores the path of plastic from the streets of Philadelphia through streams and sewers to the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers and then the North Atlantic Gyre.
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Tasty Score

Tasty Score is a human powered drum machine that converts recipes into interactive percussion scores. Commissioned for the Art Prospect Festival in Saint Petersburg, Russia the first Tasty Score converted recipes from the Soviet “Book for Tasty and Healthy Food”.

The Long Dash

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The Long Dash, a collaborative climate resiliency race, was created for the Philadelphia Science Festival. The Long Dash explores Philadelphia’s relationship to climate change and sea level rise through a cumulative choreographic challenge: part twister, part egg-race, part algorithmic choreography.

Kosmologym: Gym

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Kosmologym converted Den Frie into an experimental ethics gym. Kosmologym prototyped five games that challenged visitors to consider, compete or cooperate with others (human/animal, vegetable, mineral, institution). With FUKK & Camp Little Hope see Kosmologym.DK for more info.

Rise

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With Rise, Camp Little Hope repurposes a historic stairway at Glen Foerd to imagine the potential impact of sea level rise on different neighborhoods and landmarks in Philadelphia. Using mirrored text and the heights of the existing stairs, Rise connects global phenomena with the history of Glen Foerd and the future of the city of Philadelphia. Learn more at Camp Little Hope

Hospitality Machines v1.2

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Digital interfaces and built infrastructure often optimize a frictionless experience that makes the medium itself invisible and reduces consideration of the framework and our actions in it. As we move towards an internet of things, shrinking public space, and imagined smart cities, it becomes urgent that we develop more robust systems to consider human’s relationship to each other and non-human others.

While technology evolves quickly, driven by the free market, the artificial externalization of environmental costs, and planned obsolescence there is no market force to develop means of ethically interacting with these new technologies and the institutions they create. I believe new forms of hospitality and intimacy are crucial to systemic change.

At Practice Space in Portland I revisited and expanded on the Hospitality Machine, a straightforward approach to how art might interrogate our relationship with others. A human to human meditation, a human to plant meditation and a small library invited visitors to consider an other.

Kitchens & Capitalism: Saint Petersburg

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During a CECArtsLink Back Apartment Residency in Saint Petersburg I researched the recent history of the Russian kitchen particularly in the kommunalka or communal apartment. I also became fascinated with The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food (Книга о вкусной и здоровой пище). First published in 1939, this Soviet cookbook saw dramatic changes in 1951, 1965, 1976 and 1999 offering an interesting official portrait of changing relationships to land, food and the kitchen. You can learn more about my research here.

MED LOV SKAL MAN LAND BYGGE : Nordhavn Walking Tour

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MED LOV, a walking tour and conversation, juxtaposed the 1891 formation of Copenhagen’s FriHavn (free harbor) as an economic tool to compete with Germany’s Kiel Canal and the current expansion and gentrification of Nordhavn which is helping fund the construction of new Metro lines. Med Lov was commissioned by FUKK for Kulturhavn's Anchorpoints. Performed with with Maria Teilgård.

Recipes for Utopias

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Meals provide a point of friction where global systems intersect with local bodies. Every detail, from how we harvest, grow, care for, and eventually collect the ingredients, to the way we prepare, serve, and attend to a dish as we eat it expresses our beliefs about the world and our relationship to it. What’s for dinner tells us as much, if not more, about a utopia than any other detail. As part of Utopia School Recipes for Utopias explored the everyday practicalities of radical realities through a performative dinner that prepared dishes from 13 utopias. With Lena Hawkins, Tim Nicholas, and Will Owen

Cookbook

Dirtmaker and the Handmade Landscape

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Camp Little Hope spent six weeks working in and around Cullowhee, North Carolina on a sculptural intervention for the Western Carolina University campus trail system. Handmade Landscape (May 19 - August 26 2016) is an arts and research exhibition exploring the geography, botany and the impact of recent human land use on Gribble Gap. The research presented in the exhibit informed the creation of Dirtmaker, an environmental sculpture installed in the forest. As Dirtmaker disappears, it replenishes the depleted minerals in the forest’s soil.


Project Blog

Chamber of Commons

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Camp Little Hope was commissioned to create a public artwork for Elsewhere’s South Elm Projects. Much of the available historical material came from reports published by the Chamber of Commerce that focused on the neighborhood through the lenses of business interests and classic economic development. We created alternative publications focused on the many resources that escape notice when viewed through a traditional economic perspective. Community, not as a collection of infrastructure and services, but as relationships and interdependence. Economy, not measured in total revenues but in the impact of meaningful work and fair compensation. Development, not in dollars invested but in connections created and problems solved. Culture that already thrives in our neighborhoods instead of something that needs to be introduced.

Project Website