Experiments with the edges of walking: a collective reconnaissance
Thesis for MRes (RCA)
2020
Synopsis
The enquiry borrows the word ‘edge’ with all its meanings to ask how it might be applied to walking. Walking, in this instance, encompasses both quotidian routine walking and the deliberate act of ‘going for a walk’. There is an interest in how the agency of the word ‘edge’ might jar and jostle with the momentum of the walk. It is an invitation to the reader to walk in familiar places with a different attention, with the emphasis on the experience of the walk as the location of the art. Against the back-drop of non-human agency, human to human distancing and expanded digital ubiquity, the artist grapples with re-imagining a participatory art practice.
The tight experimental framework serves as a container for the fluid and fragmented explorations that ensue. There is a step by step set of instructions that the artist has set for herself, a directory of walks that is ever evolving, and a walking log which holds remnants of walks chosen randomly and undertaken by herself and others. These are interspersed with reflections and detours. A retrospective mapping of the walking experiments onto definitions of ‘edge’ facilitates the emergence of live threads. The text is populated with imaginary walking conversations that are grounded by footnotes, and emerging themes create a sign post of possibilities.
