The mobile methodology takes the form of the ‘crossing guard’ to reveal the embodied negotiations of flows in the urban context. By becoming emplaced ‘listeners’, the artists activate urban locations of pedestrian engagement in the ‘present’ term of crossing. To assist a public in a crossing is not just to help people negotiate obstacles between the past and the future, but to be with them in the present, to listen to the flow and observe the passage of the shadows of time, to live in a space that is neither departure nor destination, but a deeper space that is only crossing, never crossed. A crossing is not an overcoming of an obstruction, it is an opportunity to listen to the flow of movement that is everywhere, at all times: to coalesce in a constant state of becoming, to listen to the journey in its present passage.

In Hermann Hesse’s Siddharta, the ferryman takes people across the river, people for whom the river is an obstacle, a nuisance, a barrier to forging ahead. Meeting the ferryman, Siddharta notes his serenity and the seemingly timeless character of the river’s present. He asks the ferryman to teach him how to be present like the river. The ferryman answers that he is not a teacher, the river is. He listens. Crossing the river and observing its ever-changing rhythms and moods have taught him this. Siddharta lives with the ferryman, tending the boat and learning to listen.