a thousand lost walks
A series of a thousand walks;
they began as an unknown exercise to formulate paths through the city; to cultivate an understanding of the maze in which i mumbled though; now I sit; a thousand maps of charted realm; all notated. the body acts as a vessel for the memory of an imprint. The worn shoes; the hair thrown by the wind; the face smeared with dust. I carry rocks from the sea in my pocket; lest we should forget; lest we should forget.
This is a vulnerable stage. I have emerged in half form back to this island from Venice and France; where life had become an immersion; a daily practice; and now i reveal; my memories; my steps and what imprint they have dare leave. foot steps that bring an assertion of memory that clings like a strong force to moments where a camera becomes a weapon against the power to forget. I built a road; i did not want this to exist past the moment in which it was made; now photographs haunt; a unwitting archive to what i hoped to be private action of body and space and time.
To sit in a busy cafe and taste the sea. To juggle on a bus clinging to the remaining strands of heather i collected; to narrate time after time where my feet fell; to create a dialogue that forces collaboration between here and now and gone; a tangible intrigue which falters.
This is a developmental body of experimental research collated from a series of reflections from a series of on going walks and journeys I have made in the past six months; from England; to France; to Venice; to home; to happiness; to sadness; alone; together. I have journeyed from city to sea; to forest; from retreat; to mass; to solitude. A walk to remember; a walk to forget; a walk to forgive; a walk to generate; a walk to emerge; a walk to pause; a walk to begin; a walk to question; a walk to fight; a walk to escape; a walk to love; a walk to memory. Each walk has been documented in a photographic journal; photographs allowing me to take possession of the spaces I have passed; an act of non intervention to capture practice; my walks have become a systematic realization for image gathering to form sociological impressions and personal cartographies of landscapes. I have further developed a movement vocabulary from the series of impressions and imprint each journey created and left on me; this now forms a physical notation of the journeys I made in a non linear dialogue between actuality; memory and impression.
I have sat now for some hours forming a language from such impressions; a notation through my body of the lands i have walked and climbed; a physical image through movement of experience.
This exploration will show at 15 Minute Factory next week: http//15minutefactory.blogspot.com/
Current train:
” to photograph allows us to take possession of space” Susan Sontag; so to dance allows that possession to form a new dialogue that stretches beyond traditional boundaries of expectation of the form of memory; if “the act of picture taking is an event in itself” (Sontag) then the act of seeking alternative source and inspiration from that picture becomes practice. I am notating the experience of the non linear counter intuitive dialogue which i form between my body; space and time; such relationship forms content in the ability to gage the affect and effect of spatial encounter.
I will be writing a publication of these 1000 walks to be released July 2010.
Urban re:passages 