14.494 steps

14.492 steps

passing a landscape

"... everyting is made up of fleeting glances, to be kept close at hand for a journey that sometimes gets rough."

Tonino Guerra in "Instant Light. Tarkovsky Polaroids" p. 7

Vom Gehen im Eis

"Ende November 1974 rief mich ein Freund aus Paris an und sagte mir, Lotte Eisner sei schwer krank und werde wahrscheinlich sterben, Ich sagte, das darf nicht sein, nicht zu diesem Zeitpunkt, der deutsche Film könne sie gerade jetzt noch nicht entbehren, wir dürften ihren Tod nicht zulassen. Ich nahm eine Jacke, einen Kompaß und einen Matchsack mit dem nötigsten. Meine Stiefel waren so fest und neu, daß ich vertrauen in sie hatte. Ich ging auf dem geradesten Weg nach paris, in dem sicheren Glauben, sie werde am Leben bleiben, wenn ich zu Fuß käme."

(Werner Herzog, Vom Gehen im Eis. München-Paris 23.11 bis 14.12 1974. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2009. Vorbemerkung)

Or maybe I began where I ended

I walked and remembered. I walked and forgot. I walked and remembered I forgot. I forgot to walk. I remembered to walk. I walked. I walked. I walked. I counted my steps. I uncounted my steps. I ended where I began.

out of control

The lightness of life; the things inbetween; the seemingly unimportant happenings; the beautiful absurdity; the poetry of the moment. These are things I’ve been struggling to catch in my work ever since I started making art .
As an artist I’m using a lot of different media. I like to work site specific. I usually build installations, using carloads of tv’s, materials you would never have thought of, performers, text, garbage, you name it. I’m fighting, thinking, cursing, running, sweating, building, destroying. I’m filming, writing, drawing, talking. And sometimes I push a small red button. I push the button of my sx-70 because I know I have to at that specific moment and out comes a tiny image. A small world. Complete in its size, its colour, its meaning. I push the button and I don’t want to do anything else for the rest of my life. The installations disappear. The struggle stops. This is it. There’s nothing to add, nothing to change. An instant artwork. The magic of light.
Now and then the polaroids do end up in an installation. Or in a performance. But usually they are what they are. On their own in their own world. Representing a portrait, a landscape, a thought. Sometimes a beautiful image, sometimes a conceptual work but always real in its mysteriousness. Because I only pushed a button and the rest just happened.

In this world with endless possibilities I’m delighted to be guided by a camera that makes it impossible for me to be in control. I’m spending more and more time to figure out what the possibilities of this beautiful medium are and how its limits broaden the horizon of my art practice.

Walking (inspiration)

These are my personal sources so far.
If you are looking for a more extensive bibliography, check out walkart.wordpress.be


Books/articles about/involving walking (theory)

* Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space
Beacon Press 1994
* Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Belknap Press 2002
* Careri, Francesco & Gili, Gustavo. Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice. 2001
* Fischer, Ralp. Walking artists. Über die Entdeckung des Gehens in de performativen Künsten. Transcript Verlag Bielefeld 2011.
* Kaprow, Allan. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life
University of California Press 1996
* Klein, Erdmute ed. Walking. In de voetsporen van. Byblos Amsterdam 2001.
* Nicholson, Geoff. The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism. Riverhead Trade 2009
* Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust. A history of walking. Verso 2002.

Walking writers

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy: City of glass. Penguin USA 1990
Büscher, Wolfgang. Berlin-Moskau. Eine Reise zu Fuss. Rowohlt Hamburg 2005
Büscher, Wolfgang. Deutschland, eine Reise. Rowohlt Berlin 2005
Chatwin, Bruce. Songlines
Cole, Teju. Open city. 2012 Croydon
Herzog, Werner. Vom Gehen im Eis. 2009 Frankfurt am Main
Sebald, W.G. The rings of saturn. Vintage 2002.

Walking artists/collectives & artists interested in/working with "walking"

Alÿs, Francis
Beckett, Samuel
Benjamin, Walter
Brouwn, Stanley
Brown, Tricia
Calle, Sophie
Cardiff, Janet
Debord, Guy and the Situationist International
Fulton, Hamish
Gerling, Volker
Lone Twins
Long, Richard
Nauman, Bruce
Piller, Peter
Schoemakers, Jacqueline (artistic researcher: http://jacqueline-schoemaker.nl/)
The ministry of walking (www.ministryofwalking.ca)
Ulay & Abramovic

http://news.discovery.com/human/walking-circles.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17658-we-cant-help-walking-in-circles.html
http://walkart.wordpress.com/
http://www.tragewegen.be

A day for changes

The ice saints have arrived, St. Mamertus (May 11), St. Pancras (May 12), St. Servatius (May 13), St. Boniface of Tarsus (May 14) and St. Sophia of Rome (May 15). I heard them coming yesterday evening. Temperatures had rissen the whole week to a magnificent 29 degrees during yesterdays late afternoon. When the sun set the wind started to howl. There they came. Raindrops, first cautiously but then ferociously falling down. Temperatures dropped in the same speed. Tonight it might freeze again. I feel for the farmers.
Somebody else arrived today as well, 70 years ago. Joseph Beuys had a day off from his duties at the army. He was located in Erfurt and decided to visit Weimar on this day, his 21st anniversary. He payed a visit to the Nietzsche Archive, the Goethe House and the Belvedere Castle where he made an aquarel and wrote the poem “Nordischer Frühling”. It is said that the year 1942 has been a turningpoint in Beuys’ life. The so-called “Belvedere-Blatt” (Belvedere Page) can in that sense be seen as a first draft of a “Theorie des künstlerischen Schaffens” (a theory of how to create artistic work/be an artist). Only a few months after his stay in Thüringen, Beuys wrote to his parents that he had decided to become a sculptor when the war would be over.
I’m thinking about my own turningpoint today. I considered going to the Belvedere and write something there but I have to return in my own footsteps, not Beuys’ footsteps. I tried doing that in the last two weeks and since this morning I know what I have to do. In a way the Ice Saints and Beuys helped me making my decision. They didn’t force it on me but apparently May 12 is a day for changes and I must have been waiting for this day. A last cold spell before the summer starts. Something new is in the air.
Outside a train whistle confirms my thoughts. I don’t believe my ears at first but there really is an old steamtrain driving up and down just outside my window.



Nordischer Frühling

O Frühling
deine tausend Kräfte strömen in mich hinein
wenn ich durch den Wald gehe
wie Baum an Baum hier das frühe Licht empfangen
durch das Filigran der Kronen fällt der rote
Schimmer auf die grünen Blätter.
Drüben fliesst der Bach.
Silberhell klingt es
wenn die kleinen Wellen lieblich über die bunten
Kiesel plätschern. Schon über die hochheraus-
ragenden Steine zieht sich neunjähriges Moos.
Und gleich neben dem Rinnsal das kräftige
Drängen und Streben der Pflanzen. Alles
strebt gegen die herrlichen frühen Sonnenfenster
über mir. Dort kommt es rot und drüben
opalenes Blau. Und jetzt zittert es schimmernd
im Gras zwischen den Steinen.
Ostara wandelt über allen Schatten. Eine
ungeheuere Spannung wird wachgerufen zwischen
Fauna und Flora. Der Mensch fühlt, dass
die Pflanzen und Tiere seine Verwandten sind.
Diese unendliche Kraft, dies dionysische Erbe
und Überquellen schafft der Mensch durch seine
geistige Schau der Realitäten in der Natur zum
Idealbild und zum also geläuterten Kunstwerk (...)