Preliminary communication
Walking as an art
Luca Vargiu
orcid.org/0000-0003-1931-2090
Abstract
The approaches on walking, involving numerous fields of knowledge, can be divided into two large groups. The first one privileges a phenomenologicalpoint of view, concentrating their interest on the experience of space felt through walking. The second one gives birth to a critical reflection aimedat deconstructing the common representations and beliefs involved in any spatial experience. The so-called walking artists, that is, those artists whobase their art entirely on walking, are situated in between these two groups, given that they conceive their artform either as a means of understanding thesensitive and affective dimension connected to the experience of walking, or as the privileged way to engage into a critical discussion concerning experienceand space. In the first paragraph, I shall try to offer a description of this artform, mainly, but not exclusively, focusing on its major exponents,Richard Long and Hamish Fulton. The discussion will primarily concern their claim to artisticity, well expressed by Long’s incisive statement “walkingis an artform in its own right.” Next, it will address the relationship that the experience of walking establishes between body and space. In consideringthe body—following Francesco Careri’s suggestion—both as an “instrument of perception” and as a “tool for drawing” of the terrain or surroundingspace traversed, the human body is always given, phenomenologically, as a condition of possibility of the space walked or, better still, of the space generated through walking. Subsequently, in the second paragraph, I shall try to shed light to some aspects of the socio-political engagement of the walking artists, in their explicit and implicit aspects. It is true that especially Fulton makes it clear that his art is “just art”, not “political art.” However, his stance in favor of some civil and ecological campaigns—from his interest in Arne Næss’ “deep ecology” to his advocacy for Tibet and Native Americans—hadled to actions in which such engagement is explicit, like Slowalk in defense of the artist Ai Weiwei. Additionally, and in a more general sense, it is walking assuch that can be seen as an activity conveying lato sensu political implications: the defense of the slowness inherent in walking makes this artform a criticalstance against the increasing acceleration of the contemporary technocratic and productivist world. Finally, in the third paragraph, I shall discuss someaporias that this artform brings with it and that have already been thematized by the artists themselves. The point here concerns the contradiction thatseems to arise between an artform that can only be given as an experience, as such not sharable and not livable except by the walking person, and its communicability, which must necessarily take place through images or accounts, that is, by means of something totally other than the experience of walking. Such an aporia, sometimes imputed to the walking artists themselves, turns out, on closer inspection, to be a point of reflection for the artists, thus becoming one of the key points in the self-thematization of their artistic activity.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
305307
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2023.
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