Walking as an art form may seem unheard of at first, but taking something that was once a part of rituals and important ceremonies, and raising it to the status which it once had is something many artists have done. Marina Abramovic and Ulay take the mundane idea of running into one another and amplify it so that they collide. Whether it be knowingly like in Great Wall Walk when they walked toward each other from opposite ends of The Great Wall of China for months, or like in Relation in Space in which they ran in a confined space until a collision between them occurred. One could say that these pieces mirror running into someone you know in a small town because there’s only so much space where someone could exist. These artists have conceived and taken part in many performance pieces which explore how we take up space and how our gestures permit for us to interact and relate with one another. The idea of gesture in art is also present in the works of artists like Jackson Pollock whose focus was on the gesture which he made while painting. The paint which was left on the canvas was a visual consequence of his movements. One could look at his pieces as a map of his gestures which guides you through the piece based on the way he moved.
Maps in a utilitarian context are meant to be used to direct the viewer to a certain point. The idea of a map and the paths on it as art has been explored in Carl Andre’s pieces Lever and Joint in which the viewer is directed through the space as a result of how Andre’s sculptures are placed within. Paths and roads are both complex and as we walk we can consciously choose the path we follow. Artists such as Stanley Brouwn have explored the idea of the path to a specific place being displayed as art. Brouwn asked residents of Amsterdam to illustrate a way to get to certain areas and their drawings of those paths were later displayed in an exhibition called all the shoe-shops in Amsterdam. Artists such as Richard Long have even drawn with invisible lines by walking through grass to create an image in Line Made of Walking. Paths created by walking in nature even harken back to a more sacred meditative practice such as Buddhists’ circumambulation of stupas in which they unintentionally mark on the earth with their feet. In this way a drawing is created with a walk.
Artists such as Carl Andre have called upon their viewers to participate in his work. Overall, walks have become something so mundane when in the past they have been meditative or even acts of rebellion and protest, these artists have elevated the walk to a greater status and showcased the importance of it. Much of this work can be related to the idea behind the aforementioned Great Wall Walk, which was the Chinese tradition of “Four Dignities” as described by Gary Snyder, which consist of standing, lying, sitting, and walking. Each of these qualities are meant to allow the person engaging in them to become fully themselves, as Marina Abramovic and Ulay meant to do in their pieces.
The path we choose to follow can be very telling as to who we are and I feel that on the walks I take my path is decided by intention. If my intention is to get to work or school I must cross the street to get to the bus stop, and then once on the bus follow the bus’ path to get to the train station. From there I follow the path of the 7 train and onto the 4 or 5 trains, this is the fork in the road because for work I would take the train uptown, but for school I would take it downtown. Intention forms all of my walks, even the walk from the first day of class was taken because I intended on fulfilling an assignment. If the endpoint isn’t tied to a timestamp then I tend to take my time and let my eyes determine if I stop or change my path, but it is still informed by intention because I want to look at something or stop for some other reason. The trail I leave is often documented in my camera roll on my phone, but I do take bits and pieces from my day like tickets or receipts and let them creep into my art in order to document my paths on print.
Questions which I might explore while walking are:
- Why am I walking?
- What makes me stop, and why is it that important to me?
- What makes my walk unique?
- How many things on my walk have significance to me that others who took my walk would not notice?