Adele Balderston

Adele Balderston is a place-based storyteller from Kailua, Hawai‘i. Working at the intersection of geography, art and activism, Adele promotes awareness of socio-spatial inequality through mapping and interaction with urban environments. She holds an MA in Geography from Hunter College (CUNY) and a BA in New Media Communication Studies from New York University. Her involvement with storytelling through mapping, public art and urban exploration began at Soundwalk where she produced audio walking tours of neighborhoods, institutions and museums all over the world. In 2010 she served as assistant director of Conflux, New York City’s annual festival for contemporary psychogeography. She is cofounder of the Brooklyn-based artist collective, B&AB Projects, which from 2010-2012 produced pop-up exhibitions in unconventional spaces including garages, rooftops and inside a refrigerator. In 2014 she created 88 Block Walks, an ongoing series of walking tours in Kaka’ako, a Honolulu neighborhood currently undergoing large-scale redevelopment. Inspired by the atlases of Rebecca Solnit and the Detroit Geographical Expeditions of William Bunge and Gwendolyn Warren, 88 Block Walks aims to remove the lens through which landowners and developers present Kaka’ako’s narrative to the public and invite the community to create their own. In 2016 Adele received a grant from the Hawai’i Council for the Humanities to produce the fifth walking tour in the 88 Block Walks series—a multimedia living history experience featuring actors and projections entitled “The Living Archive”—which will debut in fall 2017.

Residency/Fellowship

Equal Justice 2017/2018

Website

88blockwalks.com

Location

Honolulu, HI USA