Oslo Flaneur Festival (O.F.F.) 2025 presents:
LOOKING FOR O — KAREN RANN
Full program: www.flaneurfestival.no
In Looking for O, you begin wherever you like and walk for as long as you want. Only the end point—day, time, and place—is fixed. Your task is to look down regularly and frequently, both to enjoy the fabric of the ground beneath your feet and to be vigilant for encounters with zero.
The rich and varied textures of city paths are now studded with discarded Os. These are the ubiquitous rubber hair bands that have fallen or been lost. They are most frequently encountered in parks, at road junctions, along cycle routes and near universities—but can appear anywhere. Often quite colourful, these small circles appear to be both meaningful: detritus as punctuation, but are also quite literally ‘something as nothing’.
You log your route and photograph your finds in situ—in 4:4 ratio. Our found imagery will be shared at the end meeting point. Ideas for location, timing and format(s) for this will be explored with you—please see additional comments.
This is the shared end meeting point for all individual flâneur tours looking for O.
Photo by Artlink (Donegal, Ireland).
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Karen Rann
During a British Council scholarship to the Fine Art Academy in Budapest, Hungary (1992–94), Karen Rann made wings for unloved buildings. Since then, her work has focused on overlooked places and voids—accentuated through presence.
In the UK, she has held artist residencies with Wysing Arts, the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, St Andrew’s Cathedral Inverness, and the National Trust for Scotland. She lived in Germany for six years and also held a residency with Kulturtage in Oldenburg.
An obsession with how to depict hills on maps led to an AHRC-funded PhD from Queen’s University Belfast (2018–22), followed by walks and exhibitions with Artlink, Donegal (2023–24). She has also shown at performance festivals in Japan, Poland, and Romania. Her projects—many of them walking or performance-based—have been supported by Arts Council England, Arts Council Ireland, and Creative Scotland.
www.karenrann.co.uk
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This walk is part of Oslo Flaneur Festival (O.F.F.) 2025, a three-day celebration of walking, wandering, and urban discovery. From June 27–29, the streets of Oslo become our playground for poetic detours, hidden routes, and sensory journeys.
All events are free and take place outdoors.
Full program: www.flaneurfestival.no
O.F.F. 2025 is financially supported by the City of Oslo.
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