Take a walk

A piece of art that I am particularly interested in that uses walking is Marina Abramovic and Uwe Laysiepens The Great Wall Walk. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramović described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi Desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye". I find this really personal and I find it really interesting how they turned there break up into art.

http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/190/1986


Something which I took alot of inspiration from was Francis Alÿs, the leak. Citing walking as the centre of his practice, for his first performance The Collector (1991), he dragged a small magnetic toy dog on wheels through Mexico City so as to attract debris to it. In Fairy Tales (1995), he takes a walk after unravelling the sweater he has on, leaving an ever-lengthening, blue-thread trail in his wake. Also in 1995, Alÿs realised an action in São Paulo called The Leak in which he walked from a gallery, around the city, and back into the gallery trailing a dribbled line from an open can of blue paint. This action was reprised in 2004 when Alÿs walked along the armistice border in Jerusalem, known as 'the green line', carrying a can filled with green paint. The bottom of the can was perforated with a small hole, so the paint dripped out as a continuous squiggly line on the ground as he walked. The work Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) documents an action performed on the streets of Mexico City in 1997. The film depicts a simple and seemingly pointless endeavour - a large block of ice being pushed through the city streets for 9 hours until it melts away to nothing.

I created a video following someone putting there shoes on and walking into town. The video was just following the feet, and we went through differant areas like walking through leaves, through puddles, up and down steps, in a lift, in a dark alley- this was may favourite area becuase it was all black but very echoy and the occasional flash of light made it quite dramatic. We also collect objects along the way and mirrored the start of the video but with the objects. Unfortunatly I cannot upload my video onto my blogger account. It also would let me rotate this image.