Walking Art Practice , livre ebook

Triarchy Press - Ernesto Pujol

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111 pages

English

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Extrait

Description

a collection of intimate reflections by artist Ernesto Pujol, which bring together his experiences as a former monk, performance artist, social choreographer and educator.

Sujets

Walking

Informations

Publié par	Triarchy Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781911193371
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published by Triarchy Press
Axminster, England
First Edition, 2018
info@triarchypress.net
www.triarchypress.net
Copyright © Ernesto Pujol, 2018
The right of Ernesto Pujol to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the publisher’s prior written permission.
All rights reserved
A catalogue record is available from the British Library.
ISBNs:
Paperback: 978-1-911193-36-4
ePub: 978-1-911193-37-1
Cover design: Ernesto Pujol
Images from ‘Speaking in Silence’, Honolulu, 2011, courtesy of the artist
This book is dedicated to three unforgettable walking teachers:
Alma Pujol, my mother, in memory of our urban walks
Saralyn Reece Hardy, walker of the Kansas prairie
Rebecca Solnit, for her inspiring Wanderlust
not my thoughts
but my steps
connect me
with others
Preface
Walking threads thoughts triggered and pursued, then dropped and picked up to their resolution, or left by the roadside, until who knows when. This is a book about the when .
This is a hybrid book with art book elements and the personal content of a field journal that shares reflections by a socially engaged, cultural practitioner. It may serve as a manifesto for artists who walk and a resource for performers-a performative walking manual.
Although this book has a structure consisting of three thematic parts, I have written it in such a way that readers can open the book anywhere and read my 68 reflections in any order.
In terms of order, all walking is repetitive. Therefore, there is a certain amount of conscious overlapping and repetition because I have allowed it to be reflective of the repetitiveness of walking, of how repetitive steps work the mind of the walker.
I wish to acknowledge my friends Lori Brack and Kate Zeller for their helpful suggestions about my first manuscript. I also wish to thank all who have supported my walking art projects over the years as funders, hosts, curators, advisors, colleagues, partners, producers, performers, volunteers, docents, documentarians, journalists, and friends. My performative walks have been collective productions and experiences that would not have happened without their trust, loyalty, and generosity.
I also wish to voice the gratitude of many walkers in thanking Triarchy Press for their commitment to books on walking. I personally wish to thank my editor, Andrew Carey, for being a word man and reclaiming the original title of Roadside Spiritualities, which had been strategically changed to Roadside Philosophies. Andrew gently reminded me of my own beliefs: that religious rituals should not be confused with the intuitive gestures of the human spirit, which sustain our walking through creative beliefs about the road.
Contents
Introduction: First Steps
A Working Definition
Part One: Walking Practice
One Walks One
Flowing Stillness
Curating Walking
Decolonizing Walking
Short Walks
Meaningful Steps
Path Into Paths
The Spinario Walks
Timeless Walks
Walking Death
Walking Love
Walking Performance
Walking Socially Engaged Practice
Walking as Recovering
Walking Sex
Walking Needs
Walking Stillness
Walking the Child
Interruptions
Walking the Animal
Walking with Trees
Walking the Future
Walking Urban Memories
Walking the Imagination
Walking Histories Responses
Part Two: Roadside Spiritualities
Sustaining Sight
Walking Time
Walking Myth
Bodhisattva Walks
Cloister Walks
Walker Blueprints
Destinations
Magical Walking
Multiple Paths
Psychic Topography
Sadhuc Walkers
Buddhist Walkers
Walker Stages
Walking Worship
Walking Empathy
Walking the Sacred
Walking Vessel
Crossing Walks
Walking Religion
Part Three: Teaching Walking
No-Thought Walking
Walking School
Decoding Failure
Detaching from Art
The Post-Art Age
Liberating Artists
Deconstructing Stepping
Listening to Walking
Message Carriers
Path Integrity
Silent Group Walks
A Culture of Negativity
Walking Disarmament
Walking Aesthetics
Walking the Imagination
Walking Language
Walking Leadership
Walking Rejections
Walking Slowness
Walking Teachers
Body Knowledge
Writing About Walking
Postscript: Onwards
Glossary
References
About the Author
Introduction: First Steps
The universe only winks at the ones no one will believe.
Michael Cunningham, The Snow Queen
We walk. No one taught us how. We taught ourselves, while adults watched in awe, holding our hands, trying to protect us from bump, fall, and hurt. However, for most of us, that early childhood experience is beyond recall.
Unless we walk for healthy exercise or meaningful pilgrimage, technology has eliminated our need for long-distance walking. Few in the West walk to work. Most step to and from their car, bus, or train, stepping across the street, to the corner, around the block. At most, we stroll through farmers markets, shops, and malls. The housebound, interned, and imprisoned move from room to room.
Is this truly walking? Walking erect was one of the gestures and experiences that made us human. Walking is connected to breathing; to the intake of oxygen for the brain; to the lubrication of joints; to the flow of our metabolism and digestion; and to the burning of calories. Walking keeps the body healthy, if not alive. It is a medical fact that the minute we stop moving, the body starts breaking down. Survival requires movement. Even the bedbound require massage, or muscle weakens and skin rots.
However, Western, post-industrial humanity walks less and less, associating the need for laborious walking with class, with lack of resources, with poverty. It is hard for an audience to regard its own daily, unremarkable walking ability, minimally skill-based, as a visible sign of intellect or talent, a credible form of art making. Yet, performative walking practice is now a form of contemporary public art precisely for these reasons-because, when a vital aspect of our humanity is at the point of being lost, artists take note. And artists are walking, everywhere.
Artists are seeking to challenge our increasing urban indoor passivity, taking us outside our stasis to see, listen, think, and feel-to experience-reconnecting with each other and Nature before it is lost. Artists seek to reject viewing the world only through digital images, energy-efficient windows of climate-controlled rooms, fast hybrid vehicles, mobile phones or computer screens, giving us the gift of full perception through immersion. They seek to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, think, and remember the forgotten, to experience something through our minds and bodies. To shiver in the woods, sweat in a jungle, and thirst through a desert. To see the visible and sense the invisible seeing us, fully experiencing through all our organs of perception-again.
A culture is how a specific people, in a specific place, in a specific moment, choose to portray themselves to each other and to the world. Artists are choosing to walk in order to regain control of our being from government officials, political parties, religions, corporations, and media. Artists are walking for you and me; artists are walking for us.
A Working Definition
I strive to understand what it is that I do. What is a socially engaged practice? And what is the role of performativity within my public practice? For me, the answer shifts year to year, like a migrant. Below is the definition that I am currently working with. The one constant in my ongoing reflection is that my practice remains a riverbed of rock that holds an ever-changing wild river of thought:
A socially engaged, public performance practice is
…the site-specific embodiment of urgent social issues
…through considered human gesture, such as conscious walking,
…ethically made and generously shared with a community
…as a form of diagnostic, collective, poetic portrait,
…freely offered for aesthetic appreciation and meaningful reflection,
…ultimately seeking a socially transformative, cultural experience.
Before reading on, I invite you to visit the glossary. It lists a selection of the terms I use, as I define them, which may be helpful in answering questions along the way.
Part One
Walking Practice
One Walks One
My humanity is very prosaic. It often challenges me with its childlike wants before a walk, and with its recovery needs after walking. However, when I finally walk, something transformative happens. The walker is the true me. I do not mean that the best of me walks. It is much more than that. It is about the coming together of all-of-me, finally achieving a healed unity during the walk.
I walk neither as a needy body, nor as a utopian thinker. I walk as one with myself. My self is finally unified by the walk. Brain and body become mind. And in becoming mind, I am mindful; I walk mindfully. And in so doing, I walk as One with Nature.
This is a Oneness that is greater than I. It is not about the fusion of two different but parallel realities, but about one ultimate reality that requires inextricable moving elements. Walking vanquishes the inner and outer duality of the human animal, and of humanity and Nature. Walking unifies the interiority of the walker, and walks it back to Nature, completing and reintegrating the walker, and thus, completing Nature.
Nature needs us. We both lost when we were separated. We, too, were an important element in its internal balance.
Flowing Stillness
In 2003, curator Saralyn Reece Hardy and I created a project at the Salina Art Center called Becoming the Land . I invited the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Kansas homesteaders and farmers to revisit their ancestral landscape with me. There was no verticality but t