Quick quiz! One question.

Imagine the world is run by children.

Utopia or dystopia?

It’s a juicy early summer twilight and on the grass in Mile End, by the pub used as a landmark, clusters of adult humans mill about exchanging masks of pleasant expectation, as though preemptively bemused, being more furtive than usual with their beers. It’s time for Night Walks with Teenagers, a peripatetic encounter-performance led and facilitated by – you guessed it –local teens, in which the usual rules of shepherding are reversed and adults, en masse, obediently play along.

Mammalian Diving Reflex, the Canadian-German company and mobile ‘social acupuncture’ clinic founded as a response to End Times (in 1993, mind you!), is known for their ‘site- and social- specific’ work, bringing together people who otherwise wouldn’t be, and giving young people agency and presence. The name, of course, refers to the biological response humans have under submersion, what (founder) Darren O’Donnell calls a ‘metaphor for surviving difficult times’. As in their well-known piece, Haircuts by Children (what it says on the tin), Night Walks holds the appeal of risk: this awkward churn between childhood and adulthood is a potent time; I wonder what strange places we might go this evening.

So our leaders appear, and I am surprised because they seem quite young for what I think teenagers are. Or is it me? Some of them have pimples, so, OK, they must be legit. I join my fellow Olds in a single docile mass, to receive instructions from the bullhorn. They say: ‘We’re gonna show you how to have fun!’  And so we go: we dutifully form groups of differing sizes, jump up and down, run in formation down a leafy path, high-fi-i-i-ve each other like football players. The Olds have the advantage in numbers; there are maybe eighty to a hundred of us, streaming up the park trail. At something like a border checkpoint, we’re asked for our glowsticks, which only some people have been issued. Oops. Glowstick holders get to skip the queue and go straight to the hill – I prepare for questioning. Agents armed with waterguns are stationed with attitude along the path. The worst sport ever, I hurry along clutching my ‘adulting’ bag- the one I use to impersonate a grown-up at interviews. I’m hoping it doesn’t get wet.

After this the walk becomes sweeter. On the hilltop, beautiful doll-like girls sing sassy ballads on a toy ukulele; we are coached to dance along to music in choreographed steps (to the left! To the right!) that I recall from either summer camp or Mom’s gym-class aerobics. Around the bend, there are picnic blankets arranged, and on top of them candy, laid out like salt at a deer lick. We are to eat candy and share personal stories of heartbreak. There, that’s something universal! Or is it? A teenage boy tells us with disarming ease that his boyfriend broke up with him over text only days after using the L-word. The adults in our group are weirdly unforthcoming, share platitudes peeled off inspirational posters, and gaze awkwardly at what I’m sure is now a Tinder date, and the ground. Their approach feels close to Talking Down, I feel, which means the Olds are losing this round. I change some names and offer a remix of some of my latest disappointment stories, tell it to the teenager. Not sure if it helped. Some of the  adults are still wearing the face, I notice, from the lawn: the eager half-smile of half-participation. Sparklers are handed out; we light them together, passing on the flame from one slender metallic stick to the next, our corner of the park filled with sputtering pompoms of light. It’s beautiful; I imagine it would look pretty stunning in the dark. Except, mind you, it’s still mid-afternoon. Why is it still light out? No matter how much happens, dusk still feels hours away. Where is this night programme, this edge we were promised?

After our cleansing sharing we hold hands and weave around the streets of the East End in a long, ridiculous chain, catching and enjoying the ire of motorists and bystanders. This is probably the best part. A man trapped at the intersection yells out: ‘You know what? Time is the most valuable thing,’ and for a moment I wonder if he’s a plant.

The taste of public disruption in my mouth, I start to hanker for more: this can’t be the most dangerous, liminal thing we’re doing, can it? Holding hands, and holding up traffic? Weren’t we going to put hoodies on, spray paint something, sniff glue, smash a shopping centre, something? I was expecting piercing and sulking at the least. These children seem sweet, and optimistic, and innocent. (‘They’re not children!’ I remind myself for the ninth or tenth time, they’re teenagers!’)

I don’t do all this whining out loud, obviously, but find someone whose hair looks cut by a six-year-old, figuring they’re probably in charge. (I’m right.) I ask about the timing and am told the London version of Night Walks had to be set earlier than most others because of train schedules, and people studying for exams. I don’t ask if we will be blowing anything up; I’ve lost hope of that by now.

At the very end of our sunny sojourn, in the graveyard, we are given helium balloons, form a circle and release them all at once into the sky. Then, the kids (TEENAGERS) break even more cookies out for sharing – a different flavour than before. It’s easy to be seduced for a moment, mouth full of chocolate, the moment a fleet of brightly coloured balloons drifts off. But this doesn’t feel like utopia. It feels like fake ice cream nostalgia: actions symbolically associated with childhood, a confusion of  ‘carefree’ and ‘careless’.  What about the actual future: hypoglycaemia,  bad teeth, balloon shards being eaten by birds? Where is the vision or stake in the actual future? It seems like we’ve fetishised the function of youth not for its establishment of the future, but its avoidance. We had a fun day in the park, us Olds, with the kids, but I’d prefer to wait for the shadows and stumbling. In sum, I feel that sums up the evening as well as Night Walks – it just doesn’t feel dark enough.

 Featured image: Mammalian Diving Reflex: Night Walks with Teenagers. Photo Pavlo Kerestey

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