Tag Archives: Walking

Regferences to walking, as an activity or as an artform

Personal Practice

Oh For Certainty

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An ode to the power of imagination

Oh for the certainty
Of rules in a book
Of a formula
Handed down from the Greeks
To make things explicable
Fully knowable
Things like yourself
Making you a fixture
A fixed thing
In a fixed world

The downside
No sense of humour
You would see that punchline coming
You would know the chicken
Intended to get
To the other side of the road
And indeed
You would be there to greet them
With your clipboard and badge
‘Hello chicken
I have read your file
You are Gallus gallus domesticus
A Red Jungle Fowl
You should be in the trees
Not crossing the road
Bird brain!’

But the chicken is certain of some other thing
It does not know for certain
It does not know the fact
It has not read the book
But is certain
Somewhere in its brain
That it is a Tyrannosaurus Rex
A king

It is plagued by intrusive thoughts
‘If I were bigger..’
It thinks of the man
‘I would have you mate
Or you would bow down before me
Before being eaten
Head first
You would be a mere snack
I would use your femur
To pick my teeth
This road is the simplest way
To get from one side of the road
To the other
I am not stupid
I am the greatest carnivore that ever lived
I am certain that one day
We chickens will again
Rule the world
We would tear through your towns
Splitting your bones
Devouring your children
Feeding on your
Warm blooded flesh
Out of my way
Before I kill you
I have roads to cross
And mammals to eat’

Personal Practice

Walking in the City

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For all walkers

In the city,
People walk.

Edinburgh, The Fringe.
A tide had not just turned,
But ran,
Or rather walked.
People, like tidal water.
Unstoppable.

And unlike water,
Where two flows meet,
Making mayhem,
Sunken boats and
Wrecks,
Space was made for everyone.

One way, AC/DC fans
Pointed the way to the venue.
The other way,
A mixture of
People, once arrived, we assume
From many boats.

A deep diversity
Seemed
To go deep down,
And also spread
As a surface
Of calm.

A dozen different languages
In a dozen minutes.
People had all come somehow
From somewhere.
Not here,
But here, no difference.

In the city,
We all walked.

Source Material

Philosophy of Walking

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I found this video below, with the words of Frédéric Gros in his book, ‘A Philosophy of Walking’. It is a recommended read. I thought it worth sharing. His opening line is stunning. What art making and walking are about.

Enjoy 3 minutes of peace and wonder, wonderful words and wonderful sights.

His words are below.

“None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections, will be of any use here.
Two legs suffice, and big eyes to see with.
Walk alone across mountains or through forests.
You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery.
You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body.
A body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind.
When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings.
Always the same thing to do all day: walk.
But the walker who marvels while walking; the blue of the rocks in a July evening light, the silvery green of olive leaves at noon, the violet morning hills, has no past, no plans, no experience.
He has within him the eternal child.
While walking, I am but a simple gaze.”

Source Material

Richard long’s walking works as art

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The artist Richard Long started a career in art by walking.

He has made a lot of indoor works, mostly in response to his outdoor experience, and these stand as conventional gallery works. But the work that intrigues me are his walks. These are many things, but essentially they are performance pieces that make a mark. In many cases, the marks made as art, like the walks made as art, are temporary. This is what makes them performance art. They are temporal.

Showing this is therefore difficult.

In many cases, Long has used text to stand in for experience. Click the word TEXT below to see this.

TEXT

There are a lot of videos of people talking about Long’s gallery work and his walking work, but there are few that simply show how Richard Long’s walking works as art.

These two below show his work well, without recourse to the opinion of third parties.

The link to his own site is below the videos.

Richard Long’s Personal Site