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Walking art is the act of walking as an art practice. Many artists incorporate walking as part of a broader practice, but some artists are primarily, or even exclusively, walking artists. If walking art does not directly involve the embodied act of walking, it at least engages meaningfully with the idea of walking. Some artists consider walking an artistic end in itself, while others use walking as a means of mark-making, storytelling,[1] social practice,[2] or some other practice. While walking artists have diverse interests, many writers have noted that walking is a way to explore the connections between mind and body[3][4] as well as space and time.
Scholars including Francesco Careri[5] and Lori Waxman[6] have demonstrated that walking as an art practice developed in literary art before visual art. Numerous other writers have noted the connection between writing and walking, often with long lists of notable walking writers.[7][8] These are writers who write about walking,[9] write while walking, or need to walk in order to write. American walking writers include Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson,[7] Walt Whitman, and Frank O'Hara. In Europe, many Romantic writers were avid walkers, including John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth.[7] William Blake was a walker, writer, and visual artist.
The literary figure of the Flâneur — the "passionate spectator"[10] — has also exerted considerable influence on walking art, especially among the Surrealists. Due largely to Walter Benjamin, the Flâneur is most associated with Charles Baudelaire, although the trope emerged earlier. It is also through Benjamin that the mythologies of the Flâneur and the Surrealists converged.[11] Whether the Flâneur truly existed as a historical figure or only a literary one is debatable,[12] but his impact on art is undeniable.[13]
Walking literature is not limited to the West. The seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō has influenced a number of walking artists. Bashō was a peripatetic poet who is credited for formalizing haiku, and for whom the esthetics of poetry and walking were closely linked.[14] Hamish Fulton has cited Bashō as an influence on his practice,[15] evident in his writing as well as his walking. Bashō is also an inspiration for Alec Finlay, as seen in his 2011 work The Road North, which draws on Bashō's journals.[16]
Given its literary precedents, it is no surprise that many scholars trace the origins of walking art to Surrealism, which is both a literary and visual art movement. The Surrealists viewed the urban environment as an organism that could be psychoanalyzed and believed walking would let them tap into the city's unconscious of the city itself. These disorienting walks, which merged the conscious and unconscious, were called deambulations.[17] In one ill-fated deambulation, André Breton traveled by foot with Louis Aragon, Max Morise, and Roger Vitract to a town selected at random.[17] The four made observations and automatic writings as they walked, but began to squabble and ultimately retreated to Paris by train. Nevertheless, the very aimlessness and disorientation of the experience was seen as a success by the Surrealists.[18] Rebecca Solnit notes the central role of walking in more established Surrealist writings, too: Paysan de Paris by Aragon, Nadja by Breton, and Last Nights of Paris by Philippe Soupault.[19]
Like Surrealism, the Situationist International encompassed both literary and visual art. Situationism evolved from Lettrism, which had already begun to make walking an esthetic practice.[20] Like the Surrealist deambulation, the Lettrists coined a term for their walking: the dérive. Dérive literally means drift in French, but the Lettrist theorist and founder of the Situationist International, Guy Debord, described the dérive as an intentional method of understanding the urban landscape.[21] Unlike the aimless Surrealist deambulation, Debord believed a dérive should follow certain procedures and result in a more objective understanding of the environment.[20][22] As a research method, though perhaps a speculative one, the dérive is associated with the field of psychogeography. The Situationists were interested in both the internal and external effects of the dérive; the walker was meant to study the world around them and experience an internal sense of emotional disorientation.[23] In many cases, disorientation was achieved with the aid of alcohol.[24]
Merlin Coverly has noted that the vague definition of psychogeography has allowed numerous artists to identify with the practice without yielding many tangible results.[25] Like the Flâneur, the dérive may operate more in the imagination of artists than in practice. The playful, avant-garde origins of the dérive ultimately resisted Debord's call for rigor.[26] Writing on contemporary psychogeography, Geoff Nicholson offers Paul Harfleet's Pansy Project as an example of a successful work at the intersection of psychology and geography.[27] Harfleet plants pansies at all the locations where he has been subjected to homophobic slurs and documents them online.[28]
For Fluxus, walking fit into a larger strategy of making art out of everyday experiences.[29] Unlike the (sometimes drunk) disorientation of Situationist and Surrealist wandering, Fluxus artists defamiliarized the everyday by calling attention to overlooked details. Benjamin Patterson exemplifies this approach with a piece called Stand Erect in his artists' book Methods and Processes (1961). The text piece describes the process of walking in a set of instructions that are both accurate and all but impossible to follow.[29] According to Dick Higgins and Ken Friedman, key tenets of Fluxus include simplicity, presence in time, and the unity of art and life[30] — all of which apply readily to walking art. Art historian and critic Lori Waxman contrasts the psychoanalytical individualism of Surrealism and overt politics of Situationism with a more experimental, collective ethos in Fluxus.[31]By creating participatory works and scores for other artists to follow, Fluxus popularized walking as an art practice. One particularly influential piece is La Monte Young's 1960 Composition 1960 #10: "Draw a straight line and follow it." Many artists have done just that.[32]
In her book Six Years: The dematerialization of the Art Object, curator Lucy Lippard defines Conceptual art as "work In which the idea Is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'"[33] In an influential 1967 article, Lippard and John Chandler identified two strains of dematerialized art: art as idea and art as action.[34] Walking art often falls into the latter category — art as action. Lippard cites Stanley Brouwn as an artist whose walking art stems from the dematerialization of conceptual art. The following piece from 1962, quoted in its entirety, illustrates Brouwn's approach: "a walk from a to b."[35]
Pilgrimage continues to inform esthetic and spiritual interpretations of walking,[36][37][38] and artists take advantage of these strong associations. Hamish Fulton followed an ancient route from Winchester to Canterbury for his 165-mile walk, The Pilgrim's Way (1971).[39] Fulton has also explored non-Western spiritual walking, as in Kora (2009), which references the Tibetan Kora — a circumambulatory meditation or pilgrimage.[40]
Protests and processions are a frequent reference point for walking artists, whether walking solo or with a group. For The Modern Procession (2002), Francis Alÿs borrowed the trappings of an elaborate religious procession to ritually move works from MoMA in Manhattan to Queens.[41] Following a Peruvian brass band, palanquins bearing (replica) works from MoMA's collection were carried by over 150 volunteers through the streets of New York City and across the Queensboro Bridge.[42] In 2011 Hamish Fulton staged Slowalk (In support of Ai Weiwei) as a protest against the artist's imprisonment. Slowalk was a collective piece in which ninety-nine participants attempted to silently traverse Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in precisely thirty minutes.[43] The protest coincided with Ai Weiwei's exhibition Sunflower Seeds, also at the Tate.[44] However, just as marching is only one form of activism, not all protest pieces borrow from the aesthetics of marching. For example, Regina José Galindo's Who Can Erase the Traces? (2003) protests an unconstitutional election, but does so with a track of bloody footprints between government buildings.
Following is another strategy used by walking artists, epitomized by Vito Acconci's Following Piece (1969).[45] For nearly a month, Acconci would pick a stranger to follow and record their whereabouts in a notebook until they entered a private place where he could no longer follow. The well-known photographs that comprise the work were re-staged after the fact.[46] A decade later, Sophie Calle followed a man for thirteen days in Venice and noted his movements like a detective. Eventually she is discovered, but continues the project, which becomes the artists' book Suite Vénitienne in 1983 and an exhibition in 1996.[47]
Endurance is a component of many walking artists' practice. Guido van der Werve is an artist and marathon runner whose work explores repetition, endurance, and exhaustion.[48] In 2011 he completed Nummer dertient, effugio C: you're always only half a day away, in which he ran laps around his house for twelve hours.[48][49] Instead of running circles, other artists test their endurance over great distances. This is the case in Two Lovers — the Great Wall Walk (1988) by performance artists Marina Abramović and Ulay.[50] The two walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and, after ninety days, met in the middle, embraced, and then parted ways to complete their journey from end to end.[51]
Pushing and pulling often accompany walking, especially for artists interested in endurance or absurdity. David Hammons walked down the streets of New York City, kicking a metal bucket, in his work Phat Free (1995–1999).[52][53] Francis Alÿs pushed an ice block down the streets of Mexico City until it melted in Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing (1997).[54][55] In House and Universe (2012–2013), Mary Mattingly bundled all of her belongings into a massive ball, which she then dragged through the streets behind her.[56]
Migration and borders are frequent themes for walking artists since they represent extreme cases of mobility and its limit. Francis Alÿs created The Green Line (Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political, and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic) (2004) by dripping green paint from a can while he walked the "green line" that separates Jewish and Arab quarters of Jerusalem.[57] Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez-Jonas explore politics and power dynamics in their piece Migration (1999). The video piece shows the barefoot artists following literally in one another's footsteps on a beach, obliterating the other's footprint with each step.[58]
Mapping serves as a reference point as well as a form of documentation for many walking artists. John Baldessari's California Map Project (1969) imagines that the text on a map is actually a feature of the landscape, as if viewed from above. The artist walked the land to spell "CALIFORNIA" in large letters made from ephemeral materials in the geographic locations where those letters appeared on a map.[59] The Naked City: Illustration de l'hypothèse des plaques tournantes en psychogéographique (1957) by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn fragments and reconfigures a map of Paris to convey the experience of walking, or drifting, through the city. The map reflects what Debord found interesting rather than the city's actual geography.[60] Richard Long sometimes traces his (often circular) walks onto conventional maps, as in Cerne Abbas Walk (1975).[61] Long also makes experimental maps like Wind Line (1985)[62] and Dartmoor Wind Circle (1988) which spatially represent the direction of the wind during his walk.
Footprints are a direct way for artists to leave a visible trace of their walking activity. Rudolf Stingel left his footprints in a Styrofoam slab by treading in boots soaked with acetone. Stuart Horodner comments that the untitled work from 2000 recalls the iconic images of the first footprints on the moon.[63] In a series called Dirt Events, Curtis Mitchell fixes his footprints by caking dirt onto a store-bought rug and then walking on it until the rug reemerges.[64] Gutai artist Akira Kanayama's 1956 work Ashiato (footprints) was a continuous sheet of vinyl with uniform painted footprints,[65] running nearly 100 meters through the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in Ashiya Park.[66]
Footwear has also been used by artists to represent walking or to stand in for an absent walker. In her series 100 Boots (1971–1973), Eleanor Antin photographed formations of empty boots to reference the Vietnam War.[67] In the score for his 1989 Taking a Shoe for a Walk, Allan Kaprow calls for "pulling a shoe on a string through the city" and bandaging one's own shoes as the shoe being dragged wears out.[68]
Altered walking encompasses a variety of strategies by which artists defamiliarize the physical act of walking. Mowry Baden creates interactive sculptures that guide the way the viewer walks through them. His work K Walk (1969) is a set of metal bars that perfectly match the gait of Baden's wife but impede anyone else who tries to walk through the sculpture.[69] Focusing instead on the broader public, the art collective GRAV invited passers-by to wear spring-loaded shoes during their event, A Day in the Street (1966),[70] which was designed to encourage more active engagement with the city. Like GRAV, Marcus Coates made custom footwear for his 1999 piece Stoat. [71] Each shoe is a short wooden board balanced on two wooden pegs, which Coates lashed to his feet. Video shows the artist wobbling and shuffling down a gravel path.[72]
Group walks and guided walks are one way that walking art intersects with social practice. One example is Carmen Papalia, a blind artist who creates non-visual, participatory art. In Blind Field Shuttle (2017), participants walk in a single-file line with their eyes closed, maintaining physical contact with one another, to follow Papalia on a guided walk.[73] Instead of a group walk, Simon Pope brings along one walker at a time for his series Memorial Walks (2007–2012). Participants were asked to view a landscape painting before walking and then to envision a particular tree from the painting on their walk, mentally transplanting it into the countryside.[74][75]
Walking art participates in numerous movements and media, often at the intersections between them.
While Hamish Fulton and Richard Long adamantly rejected the land art label, Rosalind Krauss included Richard Long's walking art in her conception of sculpture in the expanded field.[76] She considered Long's 1967 A Line Made by Walking to be a marked site, since his pacing back and forth in a straight line leaves a visible, if temporary, inscription on the Earth. Other walking artists embrace the overlap between land art and walking art. John Baldessari's 1969 California Map Project is one such example.[59]
Endurance is a component of some but not all walking art. Likewise, plenty of endurance art does not involve walking, and some artists' walking is more engaged with the history and theory of endurance art than with walking art. Endurance art may be seen as a category of performance art, but walking art cannot be reduced to performance art.[citation needed]
As with endurance art, conceptual art and walking art are mutually inclusive categories. The relationship with conceptual art is most clear in walking art that exists in the form of text, either as a score or documentation. Such works demonstrate the overlap between conceptual art and Fluxus.[citation needed]
Walking art frequently occurs without an audience, which means viewers only access the work through its documentation. Works are often documented using photography. Richard Long's A Line Made by Walking (1967) is captured by a single, iconic photograph. Other works are described only in writing. Long and Hamish Fulton are particularly known for this approach. Photography and text struggle to capture the durational aspect of walking, however, so many artists turn to time-based media. Long and Fulton turn photo and text into a time-based medium by using them in artists' books.[77] Other artists use video to capture the duration of their walks, like David Hammons. Janet Cardiff and her partner George Bures Miller also work in video, but they are especially known for sound pieces, including audio walks.[78][79]
See also Category:Walking artists.
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