MAPPING, language and journey: the route to radical aesthe:c prac:ce

Transcription

1 MAPPING, language and journey: the route to radical aesthe:c prac:ce

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3 WALKSCAPES Bedolina, Val Camonica, Italy map represen:ng the system of connec:ons of everyday life in a Paleolithic village, carved into a rock in Val Camonica

4 Songlines in the region of the Warlpiri language, Australia, 2000

5 The first need to put places on a map is connected with travel: it is the reminder of the succession of the stages, the tracing of a route. The geographical map, in short, although staac, implies a narraave idea, it is conceived in keeping with an ianerary, it is an Oydessy. (Italo Calvino, Il viandante nella mappa,)

6 It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language. Brian Friel

7 ANTI WALK: walking as radical, aesthe:c prac:ce Dadaists Surrealists Situa:onist Interna:onal

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9 The urban readymade Dada raised the tradiaon of flanêrie to the level of an aestheac operaaon. (Francesco Careri, Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthe:c prac:ce, 2002) Dadaists at Saint Julien le Pauvre, 14 April 1921

10 The surrealist prac:ce of DeambulaAon automaac wriang in real space the achievement of a state of hypnosis by walking, a disorientaang loss of control a medium through which to enter into contact with the unconscious part of the territory

11 The street I believed was capable of causing surprising turning points in my life, the street, with its restlessness and its glances, was my true element: there, as in no other place, I received the winds of eventuality. (André Breton, Les Pas Perdus, Paris 1924)

12 The surrealist prac:ce of DeambulaAon automaac wriang in real space the achievement of a state of hypnosis by walking, a disorientaang loss of control a medium through which to enter into contact with the unconscious part of the territory

13 The Dérive of the Le[rists: describes a previously lacking influenaal cartography driring without direc:on nau:cal meaning is lee board, allows you to go against current the raaonal and the irraaonal, conscious and unconscious meet in the term dérive

14 In Paris we wandered from café to café, we went where our steps and inclinaaons led us. We had to make do with very lisle money [..] We did dérives in Paris in a very limited zone. We discovered routes to go from place to place that were more like detours [..] Every Ame we went out it was an adventure [..] You discover certain places in the city and you start to appreciate them because they treat you nicely in a bar or because you suddenly feel beser. This has a relaaonship with the sensaaon you feel for one place rather than another. As Debord has wrisen, if you set off on a dérive in the right frame of mind, you will certainly wind up in the right place (Ralph Rumney, Le Consul)

15 Le[rist Exhibi:on: 66 metagraphies influenaelles, Gallerie du passage, Paris, June 1954

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17 Guy Debord & the Situa:onist Interna:onal Guide Psychogéographique de Paris & The Naked City

18 Asger Jorn, Fin de Copenhague, 1957

19 CONSTANT, Symbolic RepresentaAon of New Babylon, collage, 1969

20 FLUXUS Free Flux Tours, New York, 1976 (Group walks organized to visit sidewalks, public bathrooms and other places in Soho)

21 LAND WALK: the aesthe:c nature of the path

22 Tony Smith and the New Jersey Turnpike The road and much of the landscape was ar:ficial, and yet it couldn't be called a work of art. On the other hand, it did something for me that art had never done. At first I didn't know what it was, but its effect was to liberate me from many of the views I had had about art. It seemed that there had been a reality there which had not had any expression in art. Tony Smith, interview with Samuel Wagstaff, Arlorum, December 1966

23 1950s Japan Gutai Group: began to use the body as a form of pictorial gesture. Akira Kanayama, Footprints, 1956

24 Richard Long, A line made by walking, 1967

25 I chose to make art by walking, ualizing lines and circles, or stones and days. Richard Long

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27 Walking is..an acaon that is simultaneously an act of percepaon and creaavity, of reading and wriang of the territory. (Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthe:c prac:ce, Francesco Careri)