Ways to Wander

• Publisher: Triarchy Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781909470736
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performance Art

This is your invitation to some of the many different ways to wander: 54 intriguing encounters produced by artists involved with the Walking Artists Network and beyond.

1. River Rural; River Urban

An Urban/Rural psychogeographic exploration.

To be done either in one day or over a period of several days or as an ongoing research project.

Choose a river in a city or a town.

Decide where the most significant point of the river is in the urban area.

Find out where the river’s source is.

Go to the source. Take a photograph or make a drawing of the source. Write notes about the source. Note any ambiguities as to what is the actual source.

Walk from the source to the point on the river in the town or city you have chosen. (This can be done in one go or in sections). Take photographs, make drawings, take notes as you go. Note how you have to take diversions around private land.

Reflect on the fact that there are parts of the river you will never see.

When you arrive at your town or city river point take a photograph, make a drawing and take notes.

Reflect on the fact that the water has come from the source to this point and flows on.

Note how the journey of the river changed as you walked along it.

Note how your journey changed as you walked along it.

Compare the source with the end point.

Now walk the route in reverse.

Repeat, doing the same from town/city river to mouth of river.

2. Feeling and Touching: a tactile-kinaesthetic walk

> A very simple way in is to start by feeling the ground beneath your
feet. Notice how you shift your centre of gravity, what your body
does to keep your balance or soften the impact of each step in
response to different surfaces – concrete, paving, turf, mud, ice,
sand… You don't have to change how you walk, just take an interest
in what's going on.>>

>> Then you can experiment – look
out for different surfaces to walk on, try different speeds or spread
your weight between a soft and a hard surface or a slippery and a
bumpy one. Avoid nothing; take an interest in everything: even
dogshit can be interesting to walk on if you have an
experimental approach.>>>

>>> Another simple activity:
touch the surfaces you see. Use your hand or face or
the skin elsewhere on your body (easier in summer) to
sample texture, hardness and temperature. You could touch
everything (which will definitely slow down your walk) or
sample surfaces from time to time. On an everyday urban
walk I can find different sorts of brick, bark, metal, moss,
stone, leaves, concrete, earth, sand, blossom, wood, glass,
fabric, standing water, running water, cat, dog, rubber, plastic…
How long can your skin hold the memory of what you've
just touched?>>>>

>>>> Or:
try imagining the feel of everything
you see, and check the accuracy of your sensory
imagination from time to time by touching
something. If thereÊs a mismatch, does
that matter? With practice, perhaps your
brain will start directly converting the visual to
the tactile and you can feel the landscape on
your skin without thinking.><|||

 

 

From: Claire Hind (C.Hind)

Sent: 21 May 2014 07:26

To: Clare Qualmann (c.qualmann)

Subject: Ways to Wander project

----------------------------------------------------

Dear Clare,

Walking is both a controlled, limited and rule-based activity and a free, spontaneous and improvised experience. Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust calls upon the seriousness of walking and also its playfulness.

My childhood consisted of repetitive acts of hiking in the mountains of Wales and always with a task of getting around a lake, or scrambling to the top of a rock - but never a summit, as a family of 6 we could never quite make it that far – because the clouds came down and the weather changed pretty rapidly, I recall. Still, we set off every week even in the worst of weathers and we hiked with purpose but with jokes and laughter, sometimes tears. I remember once being scared of some boggy terrain convinced it was sinking sand and I prayed that the soggy landscape underneath my feet wouldn't feed me to the mud troll. At the age of 7, the site of Tryfan, always dark, perpetually in shadow towering above me, tall and fierce was both exciting and terrifying like a sleeping dinosaur that could wake at any moment.

Solnit's walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory and heartbreak shaped my past and paved my future, if there is ever a pilgrimage then it is the walk that slips between Ludus (serious play) and Paidia (free play) – which Roger Caillois talks about in his book Man, Play and Games.

Claire

3.

For years, I have used the metaphor of wandering to help explain how I understand the central creative process I believe to be at the heart of design. In using the word design, I wish to include artists, musicians and architects: the word design refers to a shared creative process.

Imagine the following. You go into the countryside and start walking. You maybe have a small hamper with you, or some food in a rucksack. You walk along a bit, and after a time see something you think you might walk towards. In a while, you change your mind and walk off the path through some trees, with no idea where you’re going. Well, you’ve had no idea where you are going all along: you are wandering. You find a path, follow it, come to a junction and decide to go one way or the other. After a bit you decide to go and take the other branch. Perhaps you can still see that something, but probably not.

So it goes on.

After a bit you come to a place that you just like. Perhaps the sun is out. You are quietly by yourself. It’s peaceful, birds sing, the grass is inviting.

Somehow, without any particular criteria, perhaps without even realising it, you feel this is the place to stop. You sit down, get out your picnic, eat and drink. This is wonderful. You realise that your wandering has acquired a purpose: to arrive at this place. You can look back at your wandering journey and pretend it was logical and sensible and ordered! You did not know it before and you could not have described it, But it’s right. Everything fits in place. The walk takes form as leading you here.

If that sounds to you like a metaphor for design, I am glad.

4. Crossing Paths/Different Worlds in Abney Park Cemetery

 

Upon entering the Victorian gates on Stoke Newington High Street, ignore (or not) the Strong Brew-favouring vagabonds who have made the right-hand corner their local. Walk with me towards the overhanging gloom, tread the worn path that takes you to the left. There is such a clash of histories in this anachronistic space. Crooked stones being swallowed up by lush and greedy nature, beaten back kindly by the Friends of Abney Park Cemetery – their eternal merry war. Let’s leave the jogging traffic and laughter of this open space to take a turn to the right into this first side path. The branches overhead and vines ever climbing create a little silence for you and me. What shoes are you wearing? Feel like a scramble? You’re not supposed to (shhhh) but here up on the left we can climb (respectfully) through the gravestones to an even more secluded spot. Here.

This is where my best thinking gets done. Amidst these voices long-silenced I find my voice. A little secret place of quiet away from the main path where other trajectories are being lived. It’s a funny thing, crossing paths, different worlds. There is no reverence here for joggers or teenagers just out from school – just a space, a path, a journey that needs to be made over a space in the way; but, perhaps, not even in the way, simply ignored.

Let’s leave our isolation and get back to the path. Make a left at the next junction. Do you see that? Straight ahead? It’s a ruin in the midst of refurbishment: the oldest dissenter chapel in Europe. Walk towards it.

In the clearing at the top of the chapel, above the nave, is an old tree, right here on your right. Do you see? It has a sign announcing that it has survived two fires. Not ten feet away is a burnt out fire site with ash. Perhaps this site has some ritualistic significance for people. They can’t seem to resist lighting fires here. Or perhaps the sign declaring the tree’s survival inspires people to continue the tradition. Or maybe all this is just a coincidence. Let’s sit here. The sun is nice. No need for a fire.

5. Teleconnection Teledirection

An urban game for two pedestrian players

Equipment:

Two mobile phones.

Rules:

Begin back to back, phone in hand.

The leader explores the city in any direction, and at whatever pace, they choose.

Every time the leader turns left or right, doubles back, pauses or resumes their walk, they text this direction to the follower.

The follower may only act when fol...