A Walking Journey through History and Landscape - The agile brain and the thinking body Celine Lavinia Battolla
CELINE LAVINIA BATTOLLA Level 6 c.battolla1@uni.brighton. ac.uk University of Brighton School of Architecture AD 673 - Humanities III: Dissertation Tutor: Karin Jaschke 26 January 2015 5450 words
I hereby declare that, I have consulted, and understand, the information provided in the University of Brighton’s Plagiarism Awareness Pack and the information on academic standards and conventions for referencing given in the module directive. I know that plagiarism means passing off someone else’s writings or ideas as if they were my own, whether deliberately or inadvertently. I understand that doing so constitutes academic misconduct and may lead to exclusion from the University. I have therefore taken every care in the work submitted here to accurately reference all writings and ideas that are not my own, whether from printed, online, or other sources. Signature: Celine Battolla Date: 26 - 01- 2015
“Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking.� 1 1 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History ofWalking (2000), P. 3
Contents Preface............................................................................................................................Page 9 Introduction............................................................................................................Page 11 Part 1 – The Writer as Walker..........................................................................Page 21 Part 2 – The Art of Walking..............................................................................Page 27 Journeys of experimentation...........................................................................Page 35 Conclusion.................................................................................................................Page 41 Bibliography...............................................................................................................Page 43 Images & Acknowledgements..........................................................................Page 45
Preface “Isn’t it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking…” 2 What follows is an attempt to answer, even if only partially, some of these questions, through reference to thinkers who have themselves previously tried to do so, and through first hand experience recounts. 2 Honore De Balzac , Théorie De La Démarche (1978).
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introduction Walking has always been something I thoroughly enjoyed and regarded as incredibly compelling. I find it keeps my feet on the ground but at the same time, whilst I am doing it, my head is in the clouds: it might be the fresh air, or the fact that when I walk all the thoughts I have been repressing seem to finally come alive and occupy my mind. Something about it makes me feel like I am part of what surrounds me, and what is around me slowly allows me to understand myself more. A range of writers and thinkers from different disciplines have dealt with walking and in this dissertation I will analyse the ways in which it has influenced and affected their work and its changing role throughout time. Philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have dealt with the aforementioned idea of ‘Bewusstsein’ (consciousness, awareness) of the self and the world through movement, although each one of them in a very distinct way. Kierkegaard lived off the inheritance of philosopher, writer and composer Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who regarded walking as an expression of well being, a symbol of virtue, an expression of freedom and harmony with nature meanwhile being a contemplative exercise whilst also providing casual contacts with his fellow Parisians. Likewise Kierkegaard, who frequently toured the city of Copenhagen, indeed considered a solitary rambling a means for contemplation, but on top of this he added that the reason for this is the brain’s requirement of some sort of distraction, a “diversion of chance contacts on the streets and alleys”3, to be able to withdraw itself. To understand how different the fundamental role of walking is in Benjamin’s philosophy one needs to define the figure of the ‘Flâneur’: this term was made famous by French 3 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers: F-K (1970). • 11 •
Decadent poet Charles Baudelaire, who used it to describe a gentleman who strolls through the city streets and is moved by what he sees. This urban explorer intentionally creates a space for idle wandering without destination, heightening the chance of discovery of what is around, above and in front of him. Benjamin’s conception of Flâneur involves a sense of wonder, the air of open-minded exploration and imminent discovery, and it responds to a specific time in history when the industrial revolution and modern life where taking over and defines not only a ‘way of being’ but is attributable to the social class of the bourgeoisie only. In contrast with Benjamin’s idea of the outside shaping the individual, Merleau-Ponty’s theory is that space acquires a different meaning and provides a unique experience for each and every subject but at the same time it only exists when there is a subject to experience it: “there would be no space at all for me if I had no body.[…] The world and the subject reflect and flow into each other through the body that provides the living bond with the world.”4 As he described in his masterpiece Phenomenology of Perception, according to the philosopher the existential structure of the human being can be found in the primitive openness of the subject to the external world through the intermediary of the moving body, so space in other words is the primordial expression of our “being-in-the-world”, ‘être-au-monde’ (an expression first used by German philosopher Martin Heidegger).
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4 Alfred North Whitehead, Science of the ModernWorld (1925), P. 91. • 12 •
In more recent years writer Rebecca Solnit refers back to Benjamin’s ideology when she explains how walking is the act of the body that allows an interrelation between subject and space: “walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and body through the world”5. It could therefore be affirmed that we exist only when acting in a space and space itself becomes recognisable as such only through the act of the human body upon it. But for the reason being that there is more than one subject existing in the world, does this mean that there are as many spaces? In line with this assumption is the point of view of archaeologist Christopher Tilley, who asserts that: “Space in itself no longer becomes a meaningful term. There is no space, only spaces. These spaces, as social productions, are always centred in relation to human agency and are amenable to reproduction or change because the constitution takes place as part of the day-to-day praxis or practical activity or individuals and groups in the world”6. Therefore walking, being a practical activity that takes place in space, can be defined as an act of assertion of topographical space while also appropriation of it, through tracks. These can be signs of “passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss.” 7 “The language of hunting has a luminous word for such markings: ‘foil’. A creature’s ‘foil’ is its track.”8 On the other hand they could be invisible, but trigger very strong thoughts and connections in our brain: for example we sometimes find ourselves particularly liking a place or being unexplainably intrigued by it: this might be because we’ve been there before, or because it reminds us of somewhere that has a connection to a previous experience we have had somewhere else, explaining how existing elements in space acquire a different, personal significance in relation to us and therefore influence our experience of space, allowing a trail of thoughts and connections in our brain rather than of footsteps on the ground. What these two different types of ‘trails’ have in common is that they exist only through walking; therefore moving and the existence of the body are necessary elements to allow thought and relationships in the world. In agreement with this statement Solnit furthermore affirms, “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.”9 The writer proceedes along these lines when stating: “It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination.”10 The space referred 5 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History ofWalking (2000), P. 29. 6 Christopher Tilley, A phenomenology of Landscape (1994), P. 10. 7 Robert Macfarlane, The old ways (2012), P. 13. 8 Ibid 9 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History ofWalking (2000), P. 7. 10 Ibid • 13 •
to in this quote is the landscape, which, as Geographer D. E. Cosgrove asserts, “unlike place it reminds us of our position in the scheme of nature. Unlike environment or space it reminds us that only through human consciousness and reason is that scheme known to us, and only through technique can we participate as humans in it. At the same time landscape reminds us that geography is everywhere, that it is a constant source of beauty and ugliness, of right and wrong, and joy and suffering, as much as it is of profit and loss.”11 Could this technique that he refers to be in the act of walking itself? After all it is through this that we can experience something which will leave a ‘scar’ on us and will allow those mental connections we discussed previously, and it’s again through walking that memories are to be born and triggered, by what Rousseau identifies in “The sight of the countryside, the succession of pleasant views, the open air” 12. And it’s again through walking that “Human activities become inscribed within a landscape such that every cliff, large tree, stream, swampy area becomes a familiar place. Daily passages through the landscape become biographic encounters for individuals, recalling traces of past activities and previous events and the reading of signs - a split log here, a marker stone there”13, as ascertained by Tilley. So the understanding of space is necessarily consequential to the understanding of its relational significance that is to say how we experience it. The experience referred to here is the one intended in a philosophical sense, a type of direct consciousness, personally acquired through the use of observation, the use and the practice of a determined sphere of reality: “a space is defined by the experience of individuals, collectivities and societies and it can have no universal essence. […] Spatial experience is not innocent and neutral, but invested with power relating to age, gender, social position and relationships with 11 Christopher Tilley, A phenomenology of Landscape (1994), P. 25. 12 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1953), P. 158. Christopher Tilley, A phenomenology of Landscape (1994), P. 27.
Fig. 2, 3, 4 , 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. I took the photographs on the following page (using the NIKON D3100 camera) on a walk I undertook from my house on Upper Lewes Road, Brighton, all the way up hill in Hollingdean, also in Brighton and Hove. Along my stroll I found interesting paths and trails, testimonies of where people before me had walked, visible through the change of textures and levels in the ground. The alternation between open and closed, muddy paths and leafy woods kept me intrigued along the way and inspired me to experiment with different photography techniques (shown in the final section of the paper entitled “Explorations”) that aim to give a less objective overview of the place and a more subjective representation of the experience from my point of view.
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others. Because space is differentially understood and experienced it forms a contradictory and conflict-ridden medium through which individuals act and are acted upon.�14 Although this would imply that a well-rounded, complete consciousness of space as a whole will never be accomplished, this has not stopped writers and thinkers throughout the centuries to try and grasp as much of it as possible. In Architectural terms, this happens when walking in the city: when talking about city strolls, one must take into account the many uses of the term Psychogeography. It describes a bewildering array of ideas from the occult and urban walking to political radicalism and avant-garde experimentation. Despite not being able to define this concept thoroughly, it is possible to identify the main ideas behind it and pinpoint the most important figures that have constantly reshaped the approach to such matter. The origin of Psychogeography is set in the 1950s, when Guy Debord is traditionally known to have set out the theoretical background to the term. The roots of Psychogeography in its situationist format are to be found in the Lettrist International(1952-7), a playful avant-garde movement with a clear debt to the subversion of dada and surrealism (1920s). It is in the journal entitled Potlatch or The Bulletin of Information of the French Group or the Lettrist International that the word first appears in print. This artistic preoccupation of this movement, that together with the Cobra and the Imaginative Bauhaus form the post14 Christopher Tilley, A phenomenology of Landscape (1994), P. 11.
Fig. 14 Guy Debord, The Naked City (1957). Paris is represented as a series of nineteen aggregates connected to each other through arrows, and their relationship can be read differently according to the emotional context one wishes to ascribe them, leaving complete freedom of interpretation. • 16 •
surrealist avant-garde, is gradually reworked into a revolutionary movement with a clear political agenda known as the Situationist International (1957-1972). This movement offers a glossary of its terminology, whose “definitions fit together like a set of Russian dolls: on the outside in situationism and beneath it, its agenda to transform urban lifeunitary urbanism. This, in turn, reveals its metodology, - psychogeography-. and this itself give way to the twofold techniques at its disposal- the dèrive and the dètounement.” 15 The dèrive is described as “A mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varies ambiances.”16 , whilst the dètournement as “The integration of present or past artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu.”17 It can be stated that Psychogeography was somehow being used as a justification to political radicalism and acquires a scientific value, as Debord initially stated that it was a rigorous discipline consisting of a clear methodology that would allow an objective investigation of the subjective realm of human emotion. Following this idea he states that the emotional zones that cannot be defined within an architectural or economic condition must be explored through the aimless stroll, the dèrive, which will provide the tools to create new cartographies that will contribute to an understanding in terms of relationships of these wanderings, “that express not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to habitual influences.”18 Debord himself published in 1957 a map entitled “The Naked City” (Fig.14), where he maps out Paris using this technique. This is one rare case where psychogeography within the situationist movement went a step further from just being theoretical: “Perhaps not surprisingly, the Situationists didn’t do much in the way of travel- they were too busy talking, fighting, writing manifestos and being expelled to get much travelling done.”19 After the inevitable split of the Situationists and the movement’s complete dissolution in 1972, the reasons became clear: Debord sees his contemporary society as one that uses consumerism, a variety of spectacular commodities and objects to choose from as ways to distract the individual from the essential emptiness of the modern life he’s living. “The urban wanderer has been subordinated to the dictatorship of the automobile as a new urban landscape emerges, a non-place dominated by technology and advertising whose endless reflective surfaces are devoid to individuality.” 20This is the future that Debord ambitiously tried to challenge: him and the situationists tried using psychogeography as their methodology, finding that it didn’t live up to their expectations, but instead revealing the contradiction between the objectivity of the method they were using to conduct their surveys and the subjectivity of that which they were aiming to catalogue. 15 Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography, P. 94. 16 Ken Knabb, internationale situationniste #1(1958). 17 Ibid 18 Guy-Ernest Debord , Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, P. 5. 19 Rachael Antony, Joel Henry, Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel, P. 22. 20 Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography, P. 102. • 17 •
Psychogeography may have not been the answer to the Situationists, but “the movement was not to provide the last word in the theorizing of urban walking.”21 This exemplifies in the masterpiece The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel De Certeau, where the author expresses the numerous explorative possibilities that psychogeography still had to offer. The book was written in 1984 with the aim of analysing and theorizing the practices of the everyday existence of a common man, from speaking and reading to walking and cooking. Under the heading Walking in the City Certeau distinguishes two figures that inhabit the modern city: the walker and the voyeur. The city he analyses is New York, that according to him is the apotheosis of the modern city, where this duality of its inhabitants is mirrored by the distinction between street-level and skyscrapers: “The ordinary practitioners of the city live down below, below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk- an elementary form of this experience of the city: they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it.”22 But looking upon them with a panoptical god-like view we find the voyeurs, who view the city in its totality, losing all individual perspectives. “For the totalizing gaze of the voyeur sees the city as a homogenous whole, an anonymous urban space that sees no space for individuals or separate identities and which erases and suppresses the personal and the local”23. De Certeau emphasises the democratic value of walking in the streets of the city, where this very simple act acquires the subversive hue it had with the Situationists, as it goes against a systematic and totalizing perspective (that in the situationist psychogeography consisted in the one imposed by the ruling authority) in favour of a re-establishment of the individual’s emotional engagement with his surroundings, acquirable only on the ground level where “millions of individuals criss-crossing the city leave a trace that can be plotted”24. The street-level is about the history of the city and the stories of its citizens. De Certeau specifies that being able to map a journey in the city doesn’t mean being able to do so with a life or an experience: systematic theoretical systems (without the exception of psychogeography) that try to capture these elements are limited in the fact that they will inevitably exclude as much as they reveal. For this reason it is safe to say that the recounts of novelists and poets uncover what De Certeau calls the ‘opaque and stubborn places’ in the city, rather than geographers and sociologists, which, despite their intentions, instead of providing an accurate assessment of urban life, tend to obscure what they mean to preserve because of their objective and programmatic approach to such matters. Throughout history there have been writers that have shared their experiences in their works of literature and I would like to analyse the exemplary case of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, with relevance to the incisive role of writing in the act of composing art. 21 Ibid
22 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, epigraph. 23 Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography, P. 105.
24 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, P. 91.
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Fig. 15 Michel Butor, L’Emploi Du Temps (1956) frontispiece. This is an example of a map drawn from memory, therefore gaps can be found where streets and building have been omitted, some configurations are recorded in great detail and others only vaguely and only the information gathered through first-hand knowledge and experience is shown. As a result we are aware when reading such maps that the information shown is partial because of its incompleteness previously mentioned and in the sense of reflecting a subjective perception of space. It is a disguised map of Manchester, recalling the surrealist way of mapping and the medieval one, which consisted in the recording of one’s personal journey rather than an objective account of a place. • 19 •
Part 1
The Writer as Walker
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William Wordsworth is said to have brought the experience of walking to a whole new level. He and his companions who were active participants in the Romantic era (an artistic, literary and intellectual movement which originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century), are said to have been amongst the first who walked for the pure reason of enjoying just being in the land. They defined the Romantic ‘Weltanschauung’, for which the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental were emphasized. Wordsworth is said to have walked almost every day of his life, preferring the rural to the urban landscape, despite still being fascinated by it: “Happy in this, that I with nature walked/ Not having a too early intercourse/ With the deformities of crowded life” 25 His unprecedented passion for walking seems to have originated in the years of his childhood. He was born on 7 April 1770 in the scenic North Western region of the Lake District. Certainly the fact he had access to the beauty of nature, and that his father always encouraged him in his readings have contributed in making him a brilliant poet. 25 William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XIII, Lines 463-465, P. 498. • 21 •
It is interesting to think about what would have happened if Wordsworth had not come into contact with that particular landscape: was the inspiration he obtained through walking in that particular ambience necessary to allow his poetry to flourish, or was it the landscape of the ‘outside’, the strive to his ‘escapism’ he experienced when in the open air, that made masterpieces like ‘Daffodils’ come to life? We can assume his poetry would have equally prospered elsewhere, as Wordsworth seemed to have walked as many times on public roads as he did on mountains and along lakes, but one thing is certain, he radically changed the way walking was perceived in times were a person who walked was considered “a sort of wild man or an out-of-the-way being, who is stared at, suspected and shunned by everybody that meets him” 26. Artist Richard Long adds that Wordsworth is “at the origin of a long historical process that culminated in the establishment of walking as a self-conscious cultural act and definite part of aesthetic experience with definite political implications” 27. With William and his sister Dorothy the concept of ‘wandering’ was born: they embarked in unplanned, exciting, sometimes ‘extremely slippery’, but also ‘delightful’, ‘lovely’ and occasionally ‘heavenly’ walks, as she describes in her Journals28(Fig.17), and they were 26 Richard Long, A Line Made byWalking, P. 13. 27 Ibid 28 Here referring to both Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth: Alfoxden Journal (1798), The Grasmere Journals Fig. 16 (See previous page) Edited image taken from the frontispiece of the Journals of DorothyWordsworth (Ed. Helen Darbishire, 1958) Fig. 17 (on the right) Extract from Dorothy Wordsworth Journal. These pages date back to the 15 April 1802.
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“as eager to go roaming the country by night as well as by day”29. The destination and the planning of the walk then seem to be irrelevant, so do the weather conditions, as the siblings seem to have gone out of their ways many times to contemplate the unexpected view or waterfall and to have walked despite there being rain and snow: “the random, the unscreened, allows you to find what you don’t know you are looking for.” 30 Wordsworth’s Guidebook to the Lake District, as an incentive to walk “for the sublimity of beauty of the forms of Nature there to be seen”31, symbolizes the “advent and defiant appropriation of walking as a thinking man’s way of life and making of art” 32. Having said that, what is relevant in Wordsworth’s walks isn’t the location, but the unique elements and circumstances that evoke emotions and allow the making of remarkable works of literature. By not choosing specific locations or panoramas, the poet is in search of a distraction, just like Kierkegaard (this can be affirmed also referring to the fact that in the final years of his life, in order to compose his poetry, he used to walk back and forth on a small garden terrace). If we look at this aspect the walk is for him a means to write, but by meanwhile being completely open to any unexpected encounters and willing to face any type of obstacle, that be a torrent of rain or a snowstorm, he acts very much like a rambler, one who is just living the experience for the sake of being surprised. Because of this it could be stated that Wordsworth’s poetry is somehow embedded in elements of some of the philosophies previously mentioned, as he, as the subject, choses the destination, is affected by it in a subjective way, but then writes about it and his poetry still embodies ways and themes relevant to his time, as they reflect the contemporary issues of social classes: many feature beggars as characters, as the poet is concerned with the poor, and more specifically the rural poor; furthermore, the fact that he entitles his collection of poems of 1798 featuring Samuel Taylor Coleridge Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems proves this point, as the word “lyrical” links the poems to rustic bards, while “ballads” are an oral mode of storytelling performed by commoners. The author puts poetry in the hands of the lower class; therefore the language used is that of the everyday comprehensible to an average common person. This, and the fact that people never made walks as remarkably long as his before him, makes Wordsworth’s walking experience outstanding and noteworthy. In Sixteenth Century England the palaces that were being erected were very often characterized by long, pointless corridors, to replace gardens during times where the weather would make these inaccessible places where to go for a walk. Gardens started to transform as well, in relation to the surroundings, gradually integrating with them, as the intent was to cause amazement in the eyes of the wandering spectator. Initially (1800-1803). 29 Colegate 2002, P. 204. 30 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History ofWalking (2000), P. 11. 31 William Wordsworth, Henry Reed, The complete poetical works ofWilliamWordsworth : together with a description of the country of the lakes in the north of England, now first published with his works (1844), P. 526 32 Richard Long, A Line Made byWalking, P. 13. • 23 •
the garden would respond to multiple views, that were to be seen from different parts of the building. Subsequently, the garden itself started to incorporate breath-taking locations and stunning elements, integrating with the surrounding Nature that became worthwhile exploring. As the years progressed, walking would start to be incontrovertibly seen as a work of art in its own right. The following section aims to look at how this concept of walking as art started and the way in which it has been dealt with in a variety of examples.
Fig. 18 (See previous page) and Fig. 19 (See above), depict two paintings, respectively Ullswater from Gobarrow Park (1819) and Buttermere Lake - A Shower (ca 1798) by Joseph Mallord William Turner, and English Romantic landscape painter, watercolorist, and printmaker. In the paintings Turner represents his intake of the Lake District. These are great examples of how an artpiece can embody the Romantic Weltanschauung mentioned earlier, for which the artist was in constant search for the Sublime.
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Part 2
The Art of Walking
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The possibilities of walking as a means to create works of art has developed in more recent times to the point were walking has become a mode of art practice, and the walk itself an artefact. Exemplary but significantly different walking artists are Richard Long and Hamish Fulton. The former is an artist who “creates works using raw materials and [his] human scale in the reality of the landscape.”33 His works range from sculptures he put together with objects found along his path or, like with his ‘pièce de résistance’, A Line Made ByWalking (Fig.22), photographs of his artwork, which would otherwise not have the quality of being timeless. The previously mentioned masterpiece depicts a narrow strip in the land the artist produced by retracing several times the same strip of land. His art is about mobility, lightness and freedom and is embedded with qualities of place, locality, time, distance and measurement. Solnit, who is the author of the book Wanderlust: A History ofWalking, also looks at the impact of this piece when conducting her analysis of how the perception of the act of walking has changed throughout time, affirming that “As an imprint, a form or shape, a physical fact both ‘inside’ and added to the landscape its ambiguity serves as a clear marker of the artist’s aspirations to stretch and test the boundaries of the expanding field of sculpture.”34 What the artist considers art changes after the realization of this opus, becomes the revolutionary blurring of disciplinary boundaries between method and form on the one hand, and form and content on the other. Quoting the artist 33 http://www.richardlong.org 34 Richard Long, A Line Made ByWalking, P. 9. • 27 •
“a walk expresses space and freedom and the knowledge of it can live in the imagination of anyone and that is another space too.” 35 This ideology triggers a rapid succession of questions starting from “is the art in the walking, in the line made by walking, or in the photograph made of the line made by walking?” 36 Did the work exist for no longer than the twenty minutes it took the author to realise the path of flattened grass, or “does the work continue to exist as one of the most potent rumors within Conceptual art folklore, across time, all the way up to its current, book length consideration?”37 Is A Line Made byWalking currently in the process of being re-made? There might not be a definite answer to these questions, but the fact of the matter is that Long’s creation, which obviously relates to the North American movement of Land art38, in terms of its
Fig. 20 (See previous page) Richard Long, Sahara Line, 1988. This image was taken from the artist’s official website, and below the following caption quotes “In the nature of things: Art about mobility, lightness and freedom. Simple creative acts of walking and marking about place, locality, time, distance and measurement.” This artwork is an exemplary statement of his creed. Fig. 22 (Below) Richard Long, A Line Made byWalking, Wiltshire, 1967. Fig. 23 and Fig. 24 (see following page) are two photos of Carl Andre installing Steel Magnesium Plain, 1969.
35 quoting Richard Long (1980). 36 Ibid 37 Ibid 38 Definition from http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/ online-resources/glossary/l/land-art of Land Art: “Land art was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Land art is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land into earthworks or making structures using natural materials found in the landscape such as rocks or twigs. The most famous land art work is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty of 1970 (See Fig. 21), an
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aspirations to be recognised as a continuation of a tradition in sculpture broadened by Minimalism39, simultaneously symbolises a radical change in how Art is both perceived and produced. Fewer of Long’s artworks make use of texts, similarly to Hamish Fulton’s pieces (Fig.25,26), which mostly consist of photographs taken during his walks combined with texts. An example of the kind of exhibitions Fulton is famous for is a series of unframed photographs he presented in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, one of which is ten different views of the same place. In his work the landscape is an object experienced in space and time. These images “cannot be placed within a tradition of Romantic landscape painting/ photography because there is no interest in the picturesque”40, the beautiful or the sublime, but they are merely a ”documentary medium for measuring spatial structures and circumstances, with the landscape as vehicle.”41 The landscape is then only a location to him, not raw material as per Long. In this he works similarly to Wordsworth: he only finds inspiration in the earthwork built out into the Great Salt Lake in the USA.” 39 (Translated) Definition from Italian encyclopaedia Treccani of Minimalism (Art): Artistic movement that developed between 1960 and 1970 in the United States of America. Defined minimal art [...] is characterized by simple forms (minimal) generally derived from elementary geometry, from modular and serial structures and the use of materials from modern industrial technology. 40 Hamish Fulton, Walking Journey, P. 116 41 Studio International, Photography as Sculpture: On Hamish Fulton (1973) P. 129 • 29 •
location he choses, as the artwork would emerge anywhere. Another artist that uses walking as a way of making art is American sculptor Carl Andre: his works can be said to follow the Minimalism art movement and after 1965 his sculptures were made to sit exclusively on the floor for people to walk on and around them (Fig. 23, 24). The sculpture’s meaning was to be physically experienced and in some cases his sculptures belonged to an installation that articulated the architecture of an entire gallery and should nott be experienced outside of this context. His art breaks the boundaries between architecture and sculptures and opens the door to new forms of Art that have strong architectural qualities to them. He was greatly impressed by Stonehenge, Wiltshire’s prehistoric monument, which with its majestic stones, shares with the artist’s works both sculptural and spatially architectural elements. By somehow altering space, these artworks create new physical boundaries and new spatial possibilities. The artworks of Carl Andre invite the spectator to interact with the art piece by walking on and experiencing it . This idea links to some concepts related to psychogeography, more specifically to Debord’s definition of it as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”42. 42 Guy-Ernest Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.
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Fig. 25 (See previous page) is a picture of the artwork by Hamish Fulton entitled Ajawaan, 1987, Art Metropole, Canada. It shows the art piece in its entirety: it consists of a panoramic image of the Ajawaar Lake and superimposed are columns of four letter words relating to the depicted natural environment. Fig. 26 (See above) is a photograph of the book Common Nature by Richard Mabey, 1984, (a collection of work by writers and artists): in the page on the left a photograph and text piece by Hamish Fulton are presented titled A Hollow Lane on the North Downs. The following page is artwork that belongs to his SelectedWalks and is titled No horizons, 1979. • 31 •
explorations
journeys of experimentation Whether it is in the landscape or in the city, walking will always be about discovery: from Kierkegaard’s, Benjamin’s and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical theories, to Wordsworth’s poems - from Long’s, Fulton’s and Andre’s works of art to De Certeau’s and Debord’s theoretical debate - walking has fascinated many brilliant minds throughout the centuries. As an Architecture student I wanted to see what would come out of a set of walking experiments that I underwent whilst doing my research for this paper.
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The first walk starts at my current doorstep at Upper Lewes Road in Brighton, United Kingdom (Fig.27: starting point at the bottom and arrival point all the way to the top). I decided to undertake a walk up a hill that I previously visited, knowing what breathtaking view was waiting for me at the top of it. The walk I was going to undertake cannot be defined as a freely taken stroll for the sake of pure enjoyment, as the route was pre-determined for the purpose of the investigation - and neither can it be seen as a way of experiencing the territory aesthetically.
Fig. 27
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I start my walk with my sketchbook in one hand and my camera in the other, being attentive to the surprising, the unexpected . As soon as I step out of my house it starts raining and I abandon the idea of drawing, after attempting it in vain on the surface of my now drenched sketchbook. I resent getting wet, as the cold is now reaching all the way into my bones. This is when the least expected of thoughts comes to my mind: William and Dorothy Wordsworth were actually doing all this trudging in the eighteen hundreds, when comforts such as hair dryers and central heating were a while away from being invented, and that is commitment. I decide to keep going, initially hoping for the weather to improve, but to my surprise I start to sense a certain curiosity for elements of the landscape that are reoccurring: the trails and paths that are impregnated in the land, which make me think about the book I am currently reading, The Old Ways, that deals with these topics. The quote that comes to my mind recites:
“The snow was overwhelmingly legible. Each print-trail seems like a plot that could be read backwards in time; a series of allusions to events since ended” . I wonder how many people before me have travelled this hill years ago, and the thought that my footsteps add another story to this stretch of land is strangely fascinating and encourages me to keep on walking. I start taking photos of the trails along my way (introduction - Fig. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) but then feel that what I am trying to convey is not coming through with these static images: I want the element of unexpectedness and surprise and the experience as a whole to break through them, rather than them only being a representation of the actual paths. So I change my recording method: I use a Lomography Diana Mini 35mm Camera instead, after deciding to try out a technique that I had never experimented with before, double exposure, hoping this would convey the phenomenological aspects involved, despite having very little knowledge of the right way of doing it. When I developed the photos I was able to produce some intriguing images that in my opinion really captured the moment and the reoccurring elements of discovery, surprise and unexpectedness (Fig.28, 29, 30).
Fig. 28
Fig. 29
Fig. 30
Fig. 27 (See previous page) is a map of Brighton highlighting the route of my first walk. Fig. 28, 29, 30 (See above) are the developed photographs taken with the Diana Mini Camera (with 35mm Black & White film) using the double exposure technique. • 37 •
Fig. 31 (On the left) is a photo I took on my second walk in Switzerland. It is a close-up of the frozen branches of a tree that I encountered on my journey. Fig.32,33,34 (Following page) are some more photos that I took on my second walk. They depict different interesting routes I underwent and they convey the breath-taking atmosphere created by the scenery I was surrounded by.
Fig. 31
The second walk was the one I preferred amongst the two, as I embarked on a journey with no clue of where I was going and where my walking would take me, but I was prepared to face any weather condition. It took place somewhere between two small Swiss villages called Gstaad and Saanen. I will not get into the details of how I pretty much got lost, but I can assure you that familiar places can be unrecognisable when covered in snow and when crucial architectural elements have been added or removed without you being aware of such changes. On top of this, the only exposed parts of my body, my eyes, were constantly being irked by snowflakes. What I do want to talk about is the natural beauty I was able to witness, in all of its glorious, frozen and timeless charm and how this allowed me to distance myself from my everyday thoughts and enjoy the purity of those moments. Once again I start walking from my family’s home in Gstaad, thinking I would travel the same route I have been walking through every year. It was to my surprise that I discovered later on that on the same route a new bridge had been built and covered in snow, and looked exactly like the one I was used to see along the way. • 38 •
This one architectural element gained incredible importance in my walk together with that day’s specific circumstances: the bridge that had been there for years was to me a sort of anchorage point, and the snow blurred my perceptions and led me into thinking that the new bridge was the one I was familiar with. This was the reason why it took me some time to get back onto the right path and understand exactly where I was: it was the time between the very first second I realised I was lost until when I found my way back that I enjoyed the most in that walk. Feeling disoriented, and not recognising what was around me, to my surprise did not make me panic, but instead made me very relaxed and I was able to grasp every minute of that experience with a mind completely free of any worry or thought. That, I would say, was what made that walk a unique stroll, unplanned, exciting and unparalleled.
Fig. 32
Fig. 33
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Fig. 33
conclusion My explorations made me reflect back on the theories I previously discussed. I tried to fit the walks within an ideology or a discipline, but found that this was impossible as they borrowed concepts from a variety of them. For instance, the first walk shares characteristics with those of Worsdworth, as I found appealing the unexpected encounters within it, but unlike the author’s walks that were a source of pure enjoyment, mine was quite the opposite. However it could be stated that without the walk the images (Fig.28,29,30) could have never been photographed and developed, and this is what could justify a comparison to Fulton’s methodology, as his artworks are the result of what is generated along his journeys and in the photo studio. On the other hand, the second walk could be defined as a ‘Rousseauian’ walk, consequently to the feelings and thoughts it triggered in me. Rousseau describes them in the following quote: “Never did I think so much, exist so vividly, and experience so much, never have I been so much myself- if I may use that expression- as in the journeys I have taken alone and on foot. There is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts.”43 This is the walking experience that deals with the phenomenological. So, to add to what has already been affirmed, the relevance of a walk lies in the journey and in the arrival, but also in the starting point, and these are the limitations of trying to define it. “How did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?”44 is a fundamental question to contemplate when taking into analisis a walking journey, because it implies the reasons, background, context and state of mind of the walker. This incapability of cataloguing a walk in a thorough way might be what makes this activity incredibly multi-faceted and everlastingly compelling. From starting as being seen as nothing more than a way for one to move from a place to another, to becoming a means to produce artworks- from being at the centre of a debate to becoming a symbol of political ideas- one can only imagine how the enduring of wanderlust will allow the act of walking to branch off in new unexpected directions. 43 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1953), P. 158. 44 Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room • 41 •
Bibliography Books Antony, Rachael, and Joël Henry. 2005. Lonely Planet Guide To Experimental Travel. Melbourne, Vic.: Lonely Planet. Appleton, Jay. 1975. The Experience Of Landscape. London: Wiley. Bachelard, Gaston, M Jolas, and John R Stilgoe. The Poetics Of Space. Balzac, Honoré de. 1978. Théorie De La Démarche. [Aix-en-Provence] (48, cours Mirabeau, 13100): Pandora. Bergson, Henri. 2004. Matter And Memory. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Bloomer, Kent C, and Charles Willard Moore. 1977. Body, Memory, And Architecture. New Haven:Yale University Press. Careri, Francesco. 2002.Walkscapes. Barcelona: Editorial Gustava Gili, GG. Certeau, Michel de, Luce Giard, Pierre Mayol, and Timothy J Tomasik. 1998. The Practice Of Everyday Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Coverley, Merlin. 2012. The Art OfWandering. Harpenden [England]: Oldcastle Books. Coverley, Merlin. 2010. Psychogeography. Harpenden, Herts: Pocket Essentials. Fulton, Hamish, Andrew Wilson, and Ben Tufnell. 2002. Walking Journey. London: Tate Publishing.
Afterall Books. Sebald, W. G. 2001. Austerlitz. New York: Random House. Sebald, W. G, and Michael Hulse. 1998. The Rings Of Saturn. New York: New Directions. Sinclair, Iain. Lights Out For The Territory. Smith, H. A., Wordsworth, Bennett Weaver, Charles L. Proudfit, Christopher Salvesen, Alec King, Mary Moorman, and Carl Woodring. 1968. ‘Wordsworth: Poet Of The Unconquerable Mind. A Collection Of Essays OnWordsworth’s Poetry’. The Modern Language Review 63 (1): 208. doi:10.2307/3722713. Solnit, Rebecca. 2006. A Field Guide To Getting Lost. New York: Penguin. Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. Wanderlust. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books. Stein, Howard F, and William G Niederland. 1989. Maps From The Mind. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Tilley, Christopher Y. 1994. A Phenomenology Of Landscape. Oxford, UK: Berg. Tuan,Yi-fu. Romantic Geography. Wordsworth, William. 1968. A Guide Through The District Of The Lakes In The North Of England. New York: Greenwood Press.
Essays
Ingold, Tim, and Jo Lee Vergunst. 2008. Ways Of Walking. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
Debord, Guy-Ernest. 1955. Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Published in Les Lèvres Nues #6.
Macfarlane, Robert. 2012. The OldWays. New York, N.Y.: Viking.
Websites
Macfarlane, Robert. 2013. Mountains Of The Mind. New York: Vintage Books. Maistre, Xavier de, Andrew Brown, and Xavier de Maistre. 2013. A Journey Around My Room. Richmond: Alma Classics. O’Rourke, Karen. Walking And Mapping. Roelstraete, Dieter. 2010. Richard Long. London: • 43 •
http://www.richardlong.org
Journal Articles Edmonds, Ernest, and Mike Leggett. 2010. ‘How Artists Fit Into Research Processes’. Leonardo 43 (2): 194-195. doi:10.1162/leon.2010.43.2.194.
IMAGES
Acknowledgements
Fig. 1 Paul Gavarni (Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier) frontispiece for Le Diable à Paris(1844–46), by French caricaturist Jean-Jacques Grandville. aupcomplit.wordpress.com
First and foremost I offer my sincerest gratitude to my tutor, Karin Jaschke, who has helped me in carrying out my research and has supported me thoughout the writing process of this dissertation. In addition I wish to acknowledge the help provided by my studio tutor Luis Diaz.
Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, Fig. 6, Fig. 7, Fig. 8, Fig. 9, Fig. 10, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Fig. 13 ‘Photographing Hollingbury’, photos by author Fig. 14 Guy Debord, The Naked City (1957). Fig. 15 Michel Butor, L’Emploi Du Temps (1956) frontispiece. Fig. 16 Frontispiece of the Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (Ed. Helen Darbishire, 1958) Fig. 17 Extract from Dorothy Wordsworth Journal http://numerocinqmagazine.com/ Fig. 18 Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ullswater from Gobarrow Park (1819) Fig. 19 Joseph Mallord William Turner, Buttermere Lake - A Shower (ca 1798) Fig. 20 Richard Long, Sahara Line (1988) Fig. 21 Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970) Fig. 22 Richard Long, A Line Made byWalking (1967) Fig. 23 Carl Andre installing Steel Magnesium Plain (1969) http://onartandspace.blogspot.co.uk/ Fig. 24 Carl Andre installing Steel Magnesium Plain (1969) http://onartandspace.blogspot.co.uk/ Fig. 25 Hamish Fulton , Ajawaan (1987) http:// artistsbooks.info/ Fig. 26 Richard Mabey ,Common Nature (1984) http://blog.rowleygallery.co.uk/ Fig. 27 http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/ Fig. 28, Fig. 29, Fig. 30 ‘Photographing Hollingbury’, photos by author Fig. 31, Fig. 32, Fig. 33, Fig. 34 ‘Switzerland’, photos by author
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