Encounters on the Walking Experience
View InfoSelf-proposed project developed during a 4 month Erasmus period at the ABK Academie Maastrich, Netherlands (March–June 2008).
Encounters on the Walking Experience emerges, as the title sugests, from the interest on a simple human activity. But more than that, it derives from speculative observations on the interest demonstrated towards this subject by critical and cultural fields of studies over the last century. Walking has been seen as an act of meaning since Baudelaire’s model of the flâneur first arose in the 19th century, and even later in the 20th century, with the development of the Situationists dérives (non-planed walks or strolls along the cities). One then associates this activity to a kind of heightened self-awareness of the surroundings or context, to someone who walks in order to experience and observe. My interest though, was not on recasting these particular writings, but instead, to convey in the same source book different accounts that examine how the subject of “the walk” has been approached in the art field over the past decades. The selection closed down to 4 artists: Richard Long, Francis Alÿs, Sophie Calle and finally Janet Cardiff. By crossing their work, and relating it to the conditions in which they take place, a plurality of perspectives and ideas over a concept strongly imprinted in the cultural and artistic field is provided.
Year: 2008
Type: Editiorial