Let's go for a walk
13/06/09
I had thought the stories about the renowned artists Gilbert and George perambulating through East London at the same time daily to their favourite restaurant in Dalston were semi mythical, until on a winter afternoon in 2002 at about teatime, I saw the spectacle for myself. The iconic pair was strolling, booted and besuited, purposefully down Fournier Street adjacent to Spitalfields market and the infamous Ripper pub, the Ten Bells. Their walk seemed as stilted, scripted and rehearsed as a their performance as living sculptures, singing ‘Underneath the Arches’, covered in gold paint in a gallery, but for the fluffy Davy Crocket hat worn by George, and the fresh faced Asian man accompanying them on their stroll.
“Wow, they really are living sculptures,” I thought to myself. I wished someone were with me so I could say “Look, there go Gilbert and George!” After that day I saw them fairly regularly, but never plucked up the courage to say hello as one might say to people, regularly encountered, who weren’t human incarnations of sculpture, and just ordinary like you or me.
Walking has always been an interesting activity to artists. An obvious example is the British artist Richard Long who creates art from walking in landscapes:
“Walking itself has a cultural history, from Pilgrims to the wandering Japanese poets, the English Romantics and contemporary long-distance walkers.
My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going 'nowhere'. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art, which was also a new way of walking: walking as art. Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking - as art - provided an ideal means for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement.”
(Richard Long's website, 2000)
Long’s walks are generally recorded or described in three ways: in maps, photographs or text works.
In Patrick Keiller’s 1997 film ‘Robinson in Space’, the two protagonists set out to follow the footsteps of Daniel Defoe. Robinson has been commissioned by an advertising agency to explore the major problems of the day. With his friend, the pair embarks on seven journeys, which loosely follow the meandering path of the Thames to investigate the cities, suburbia and countryside. The film is narrated by the authoritative voice of Paul Scofield.
His commanding commentary is monotone and inexpressive. A sense of place is derived from seemingly unrelated stills and excerpts of the journey, illuminated by a pseudo historical and scientific enquiry in the form of anecdotes. Narratives weave in and out to create an overall picture of the experience of this journey. We never see the characters, but it is almost implied that what is being observed is new yet somehow familiar to Robinson- who seems to transcend time and space within the narrative, as the script switches easily from Defoe’s interpretation to the present day and the future, as if he were a time traveller or Virginia Wolfe’s Orlando. It should be noted that Keiller himself is transparently recognisable within the film. His earlier professions as architect and artist are recognisable in the obtuse and unusual observations.
Whereas the work of Long often leaves a sculptural imprint on the route itself, and his work concerns itself with the internal connection that the artist has to a given space, through documentation and annotation; and Keiller primarily weaves personal anecdote, historical fact and fictional narratives to create the feeling of a documentary journey - other artists have concerned themselves with the visual impact that the activity of the walk has on the spectator or indeed the walker.
Janet Cardiff’s piece for Skulptur Projekts Muenster in 1997 concerned itself with surveillance and the surveilled. In ‘Walk Münster’, participants were able to engage with a work of two parts, firstly through taking a Walkman tour through the inner city. The listener heard the ephemeral sounds and voices of the city, each specifically linked to their immediate locale. Voices, birdsong, as well as narrative accounts of local stories and anecdotes about crimes in certain areas.
Cardiff here, merged the real and fictitious experience of the space itself. The aspects of control and surveillance were made clear by the CCTV style monitors where one collected the cassette player in the Museum where the tour began. Part 2 of the work was situated in the old wing of the Landesmuseum in a window overlooking the Domplatz, on the 2nd floor. Cardiff installed a telescope trained upon the public square. However, the viewer did not view the actual scene occurring outside, but instead saw a video taken from exactly the same viewpoint. The feeling of hyper observation and almost panoptical gaze, was heightened by the recorded view moving along with the mechanically timed telescope as though following people on their journey. It was obvious quite quickly that what one is looking at did not reflect the view from the window – but was meant to provide a visual counterpart to the acoustic walk in part one.
Often, the formal rules that an artist applies to their walking activity, forms a conceptual stratum for their work. From Vito Acconci purposefully walking with his equipment and artworks from the gallery to the studio and back again and Bruce Nauman pacing a room to plot the space within it, many ideas are formed from the sculptural shapes and patterns made by the walking itself.
A week ago I took part in a work commissioned for The Art Crawl in Nottingham by Katie Doubleday and Andrew Brown. I was given a map and instuctions for 'Stillness, Slowness and Stopping: A walk for a group in a city at night'. Kitted out with an ipod shuffle and a clear instruction to turn it on and follow its commands at exactly 7.50pm, I found myself to be part of an artwork. Immaculately timed and choreographed, the recorded directions led me and about 25 other people traverse the streets of Nottingham. The narration was monotone and factual but not unfriendly, yet commanding enough to want to follow through what it was telling you to do. Simple commands began with ‘speed up your pace until you reach Clumber Street…Slowly come to a halt and begin walking again at a normal pace.’ Jointly narrated by the artists, a trust was gained to follow their verbal mapping of the city centre. Being part of a group also meant there was safety in numbers and one did not feel singled out or foolish. In fact it soon became a pleasurable experience to feel as though one were part of one physical entity that made its mark on the cityscape. The most poignant instruction to stop coincided expertly with the Council House beginning its chimes. This was when people about the streets of Nottingham began to take notice of the collection of people all stood as still as sleeping automatons, dotted about one of the busiest shopping streets in Europe.
Comments began to filter through the ipod headphones….
“Oooh, what are they doing?”
“What’s it for mate?”
“What are you standing still for?”
“Don’t they look daft?!”
“Whoa, that’s well freaky!”
People, who wouldn’t normally notice your existence or catch your eye in the busy hustle of the city, were now approaching the stationary group of us and waving in our faces, trying to prompt laughter or movement. But not for long, our aural tour guides told us to begin our journey again. At times the pace was fast, sometimes slow, sometimes serendipitously timed to make a graceful crossing over the tramlines. Until we realised we were forming a neat geographical grid in the most public of places in the city, the Market Square. 5 lines of 5 people – evenly spaced, stood still in the at a time when most come on a Friday night to meet their friends and lovers at the left Lion statue before going for a pint or to a club. The clock eerily struck 8pm at almost the exact second when the grid took its intended shape. All eyes were upon us, and it felt like Nottingham’s nightlife were expecting us to put on a good show.
I wondered what we would be instructed to do next, slaves as we now were to the collective hive mind of the ipods – almost like a scene in a science fiction movie – my sense of surrealism kicked in and I wondered if we would turn into a zombie army or be beamed up into the sky to the mother ship. A friend commented after the event that he was worried that we would all be instructed to take part in some sort of choreographed dance like the Youtube favourite of the orange suited prisoners in a Thai jail who had mastered a mass performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance.
This was not the case as we all were instructed to resume our journey in a similar fashion to how we had arrived in this public square in the first instance. A few hundred yards away, we were given our freedom from the collective mind and permitted to walk at our own natural paces back to the starting point. This permitted participants to regain their anonymity and cease being surveilled, or living sculptures, or the followers of an artists work. I for one was enchanted by this interlude where I was able to travel through the familiar city, which I have walked through several times a day for over 20 years, in a new and enlightening way because I was part of a group. Somehow feeling foolish had been averted and all felt a collective amusement and sense of wonder.
Stillness, Slowness and Stopping: A walk for a group in a city at night
13/06/09
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