Walking as Art - A Mis-Guide to Anywhere

Phil Smith writes:

"We know you've covered our previous work on your website so we thought we'd send you some info about our new publication and, if you're in London at the time, we'd like to invite you to the launch of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere', a playful handbook for exploring cities. The book will be launched at the ICA, The Mall, London, on the 8th April, 6pm till 8pm, following an afternoon of walks, each based on a page from 'A Mis-guide To Anywhere' and each 'led' by one of us.

"Numbers for the launch are strictly limited so let us know if you want to come so we can put you on the guest list.

"If you would like to come on one of the mis-guided walks in the afternoon then let us know or contact the ICA direct (places are limited). The walks will each last about 90 minutes and will set off from the ICA: 12.30pm 'The problem of shopping' (Cathy), 12.45pm 'Out of place' (Stephen), 1pm 'Scales' (Simon), 1.15pm 'Masses' (Phil).

"Walking?" I respond, querulously. Phil elucidates:

We have been three years in making the new book, including walks in Shanghai, rural Zambia, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Manchester, Paris, the island of Herm… 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere' is our new guide to seeking out places of change in the city, the Anywhere that anyone can find. When we published 'An Exeter Mis-Guide' three years ago we were very surprised that it attracted an international readership - it's now taught in numerous theatre, fine art and geography departments in universities around the world. The fact that a guidebook designed for use in a small provincial English city could be used in cities like Bangalore, Melbourne and Washington, inspired the making of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere'.

"If you can't join us in London we will be having a local launch in Exeter as part of the Exeter tEXt Festival on Saturday May 13th, 12.30pm at the Phoenix.

"This is a quick stitched together note to let you have some information about various walk-orientated performances, events and objects.

"First of all the show I have written based on my Easter 2007 walk following the route of acorn-planting Charles Hurst a hundred years before will be performed by New Perspectives from mid-February and the tour schedule is here.

Dee Heddon's new book on 'Autobiography and Performance' is now out from Palgrave and has a section on Place and Self which includes material on 'the art of walking' including Crab Walks.

John Davies has published an instant book on his walk alongside and around the M62 at the end of last year called 'Walking The M62' and you can get that as a hard copy or a download.

Alyson Hallett, who has an ongoing project – the migration habits of stones – in which she carries stones around the world – has a new volume of mostly landscape poetry out ‘The Stone Library’ – I loved it and recommend it. You can get it here, or at all good libraries.

walkwalkwalk, based in London, are building up a network around 'walking as art' and are holding regular meetings.

See also some of the lectures and workshops offered by Propeller including lectures on 'Rain' and 'The Look of Things' and a workshop on 'Performing Landscapes.'

Finally, MPA are holding a four day 'Territories Re-Imagined' festival of psychogeography in Manchester in June, details .

Checking out walkwalkwalk, I learn:

"Walk walk walk: an archaeology of the familiar and the forgotten is a participatory live art event, with a walk at its core. The project begins with an exploration of urban routine. Starting from the routes we take to and from work and home, part time jobs and friends houses, we established a methodology for the systematic exploration of the areas in and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields and Whitechapel. Stepping outside, or aside from the absorption of the day to day in order to examine the places that we pass through and the narrative of pathways afresh.

"Drawing on precedents and ideas ranging from the never performed Dada walks in the 'terrains vagues' of 1920s Paris, to Iain Sinclair’s investigation of Rodinsky’s London walks in the late 1990s, we began to re-explore our walks through and across the east end. Creating a new routine: meeting at the same time and place each week to walk and work we have exhaustively researched this locale. Walking individually, then walking one anothers’ routes has shown us each new spaces, sights and places that alone we might never have encountered.

"Collecting and collating artefacts and anecdotes from our research walks has been the starting point for the ‘archaeology’ of the subtitle. Objects, images and descriptions from the route speak of the real physicality of the city fringe – the places where it extends out into the edge and vice-versa. The walk we have created will take you to the cut off spaces trapped between railway and road, down alleyways that block the less-than-determined from pursuing a route through, past ‘fine art’ graffiti, a Hawksmoor church, numerous taxi garages and abandoned pubs in a continuously evolving cityscape."

I mean, who knew? Walking as art? I mean like a Dada kind of thing even?

So yeah, and most definitely, check out A Mis-Guide To Anywhere. It'll re-open your world.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith