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Round Table reflections on the launch of Fede: The Power to go on Foot.
1. How did you get into walking as a creative process?
I became interested in the way architectural metaphors were being used to describe theatre-making processes. Dramaturgy (that is: the careful process of putting together a performance) was being talked of as ‘architecture’, a practice that was similar to urban planning. That’s the work of Cathy Turner and Wrights + Sites.
I subsequently did an in-depth study of the ways in which Situationism might have been be ‘dramaturgical’. That’s as yet unpublished. I found the Situationist writings –all of which you can find online by the way – echoed sentiments and attitudes that I had gotten used to while living in Spain. I’ve lost count of the precise figures for unemployment in Spain but let’s just say that nobody I knew had a stable job unless they were teaching English. Not even a stable job in a bar. It still surprises me how few people have heard of the 15M movement/ Spanish Revolution here in the UK.
My masters research aimed to uncover links between different ways of talking about places and ‘performance’ or ‘dramaturgy’ or ‘theatre making’ if you prefer that term. I looked at the work of Lone Twin and their dramaturg David Williams – his writing about Palermo and the books by Nicolas Whybrow on Performance and Cities. I looked at Walter Benjamin and various contemporary artists. A lot of stuff. And then I spent a little bit of time up at Deveron Arts in Huntly and it was there that I found my feet, as it were, as a walking performer/ dramaturg.
I discovered the work of Maider Lopez – her socially engaged artwork ‘How do you live this place?’ galvanised local people to find their own routes around the town, placing coloured stones at locations of their choosing to create a map of their most important memories and a series of photographs. I got into Phil Smith’s bookCounter -Tourism : I liked the simplicity and playfulness, the invitation for readers/ walkers to use their imagination in new ways, to create their own new myths about place. I was also very inspired by the curatorial projects of Mary Jane Jacob back in the early nineties (”Culture in Action” – read about it in this book by Miwon Kwon).
When I started going on longer walks, in a different frame of mind, in my hometown Edinburgh about four months ago, I realised that walking is enjoyable and healthful – but for me walking is not just about physical health. Walking is about active imagination in inhabited landscapes. Because if you can imagine a change then that’s the first step to helping create a real change. For me its about the agency of the pedestrian. We in this room are lucky. So many people don’t even have the confidence to go for a walk. We’re all aware of the effects that austerity tactics are having on communities and mental health.
Now when I work on more conventional forms of theatre production I feel I can work holistically – incorporating an awareness of site, audience relationships, sociohistorical contexts and my own status within the process.
2. Participatory and Collaborative Research Practices – walking as a connector between academic disciplines.
I think walking can be a form of ‘know how’ in the practical context of everyday life. It brings academic fields together, yes, but it also brings people together across their social boundaries, economic status and – to quite a large extent – levels of physical mobility (depending on your method!). During a time when public space is being rapidly eroded, the group walk becomes a vital meeting place. During these arguably extremely dark days, walking might be a way of reaching out across postcode boundaries and making our cities more politically healthy social spaces. Participation could become a way of producing space along lines that make our lives – not just the lives of the professional classes – worth living. I’m quite enthusiastic about the potential for walking to connect with Critical Geography but by nature my methodology (on the Edinburgh Walking Workshop and its off-shoot project ‘The Residents Association’) is walker-centred rather than focussed on my own aesthetic or political interests.
I wonder not simply what walking art can do to dynamise disparate fields but what it can do to open academia itself to the elements. So that the increasingly upper class space of higher education is able to relate to the man in the street. Collaborative workshops – curated and organised in socially engaged ways – are possibly one way of doing this.
3. How can walking art relate to protest?
Do you follow the work of the Loiterer’s Resistance Movement in Manchester? It’s run by Morag Rose who I believe is a Phd researcher down there.
Have you heard of the Caravan Gallery? Campaigning, almost, for local and working class voices to be heard and feel important. A crusade in a little yellow caravan.
What about the substantial body of work of Graeme Miller who created an audiowalk to commemorate memories of daily life along an area that is now a motorway – the M11 London link road?
Or Phil Smith’s most recent work The Footbook of Zombie Walking, which I’ve still to read but which looks great. A kind of gothic walking practice!
These have all been influences that have helped me orientate myself in the politics of walking art. I’m not going to deny that solitary walking in wild places can be an important – even radical – political act (I love it!), but I think its good to consider the scale of a political act when trying to evaluate how effective its politics really are.
On a more immediate level, my work with the Edinburgh Walking Workshop is motivated by a kind of protest against social segregation between economic classes. Edinburgh has always been noted as a startlingly socially divided place; from Engels, to Robert Louis Stevenson, to more recent research. Councils are selling their assets to encourage market-led regeneration and social housing is being cut. Poverty is rising amongst the more mobile classes due to an almost completely unregulated Private Rental Sector. People who do not form part of the lucky elite (many of whom move here from London because it is cheaper!) are quietly being exiled from ”Edinburgh” and what it seeks to represent. Those of us who stay here ought to acknowledge what is going on, especially as we try to build our own individual ‘careers’. All of this plays a part in the wider context of the politics of Scottish land and housing.
4. Feminism and walking art. ‘What’s that coming over the hill? A white, middle-class Englishman!’
First of all, there are definitely different perspectives on this debate. I mean, if a middle-class Englishman decides to go for a walk, that’s not a bad thing per se. I think the problem begins when female practitioners are cut out of mainstream conversations. I think most of us are aware of the vital work by Deirdre Heddon (University of Glasgow); perhaps less so of Phil Smith’s recent publication ‘Walking’s New Movement’ which devotes a chapter to female walking artists.
Women are arguably at the helm here. The Walking Artist’s Network was founded by Clare Qualmann; Deveron Arts and the Walking Institute in Huntly is run by Claudia Zeiske; three out of four of us here (on the panel) are female.
Some practitioners who really inspire my practice happen to be women: Monique Besten, Amy Sharrocks, Maider Lopez.
I’d also recommend having a look atSophie Rickett’s ‘Pissing Women’ which is a kind of satire on territorialism and gendered behaviour. Whether that work is ‘a walk’ or not is perhaps a debate for another day. Nando Messias has been bringing LGBT protest into his practice too – ‘Sissey’s Progress’.
Over the past few months I’ve also become aware of the legacy of Nan Shepherd. Her book The Living Mountain is a beautiful account of her solo trips to the Cairngorms. In that vein I’m a fan of Gill Russell’s recent work with Alec Finlay, and of ongoing work by Simone Kenyon.
Jeni Cumming is currently Associate Dramaturg for Good Dog Theatre co (Paris/International) and is working on an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Edinburgh:Picturesque Notes’ while running the Edinburgh Walking Workshop. She is the founder of the informal arts collective ‘The Residents Association‘ (Edinburgh, 2016). You can find her blogging about her walking practice and other artistic ventures at Resident Dramaturgies.