Walking art
[1][9][10][11] Scholars cite the British Romantics as exercising 'an outsized influence on contemporary considerations of walking' in the Western world.
[1]:101 In the United States, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman were influential in establishing the relationship between writing and walking.
[9] The French figure of the flâneur — a 'passionate spectator', typically male,[12]:40 who goes on detached strolls through urban environments — is another important precedent.
'[2]:79 In one ill-fated deambulation, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Max Morise, and Roger Vitrac traveled to Blois, a town selected at random from a map, and set off for a walk in the countryside, during which they made observations and experimented with automatic writings.
[20] The Situationist International, which cited the Dadaists and Surrealists as key influences,[21]:181 continued to develop walking tactics that have been influential to contemporary artists and activists.
[2][23] Dérive, which literally means drift in French, is an intentional method of exploring, understanding and participating in the urban landscape.
[9] Unlike the absurdity of the Dada excursion, or the aimlessness of Surrealist deambulations, the dérive follows certain procedures in order to understand and intervene in the urban environment.
[16] Fluxus artists defamiliarized the everyday by calling attention to overlooked details and emphasised simplicity, presence in time, and the unity of art and life.
[16] Art historian and critic Lori Waxman contrasts the psychoanalytical individualism of Surrealism and overt politics of the Situationists with a more experimental, collective ethos in Fluxus.
[16] By creating participatory works and scores for other artists to follow, Fluxus expanded how walking could be considered as an art practice.
[citation needed] Benjamin Patterson exemplifies this approach with a piece called Stand Erect in his artists' book Methods and Processes (1961).
[29] The same year Yoko Ono created Rape (1969), a 'candid recording' in which a camera crew pursues a foreign woman through London, following her into her apartment until she collapses, terrified, in the corner.
[4] Merlin Coverly has argued that the playful, avant-garde origins of the dérive ultimately resisted Debord's call for rigor, with the vague definition of psychogeography allowing numerous artists to identify with the practice without yielding many tangible results.
[3][22] Pilgrimage continues to inform aesthetic and spiritual interpretations of walking and artists take advantage of these strong associations.
[8] 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.
Slowalk was a collective piece in which ninety-nine participants attempted to silently traverse Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in precisely thirty minutes.
As Debbie Kent points out, The idea of artists following strangers has a long heritage, as well as a natural affinity with the city, where anonymity is the rule and it is easy to hide in the crowds.
Its ancestor can be found in The Man of the Crowd, an 1840 short story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the narrator pursues a mysterious stranger through the streets of London – then the biggest city in the world – for no apparent reason.
In one piece she 'mapped her explorations of one of Moscow’s “sleeping districts” (the residential zones where the vast majority of the city’s workers live) by following commuters home from a metro station.
Guido van der Werve is an artist and marathon runner whose work explores repetition, endurance, and exhaustion.
David Hammons walked down the streets of New York City, kicking a metal bucket, in his work Phat Free (1995–1999).
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.
[41][6] Deveron Project's Slow Marathon, a 'mass participation walk of twenty-six miles', has been examining borders and migration since Mihret Kebede and Claudia Zieske developed it in 2013.
[4]:108 Kebede originally wanted to walk from her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Scotland, but 'the combination of visa restrictions, harsh desert terrain, and the dangerous landscape' made the journey impossible.
Murad was unable to leave Palestine, and the limited terrain her group was able to walk, highlighted the different 'experiences of boundaries, borders, and access to land.
[31] The art collective GRAV invited passers-by to wear spring-loaded shoes during their event, A Day in the Street (1966),[46] which was designed to encourage more active engagement with the city.
[citation needed] Janet Cardiff and her partner George Bures Miller also work in video, but they are especially known for sound pieces, including audio walks.
