Category Archives: Architecture

Shozo Shimamoto, Please, walk on here (Kono-ue wo Aruite Kudasai) (1955)

person walking on a bridge sculpture

Shozo Shimamoto, Please, walk on here (Kono ue o aruite kudasai) (1955)

“In July 1955 Shimamoto created his work Please Walk on Here as a part of the “Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun” in Ashiya City.[20] The work consisted of two narrow sets of wooden boards arranged in a straight path. One set was stable to walk on while the other was unstable, akin to a broken rope bridge.[20] … Please Walk on Here was reproduced and exhibited on the occasion of the 1993 Venice Biennale.[11]” [credit]

“Co-founder of the Japanese avant-garde collective the Gutai Art Group in the 1950s, Shozo Shimamoto pioneered action painting, performance art, and mail art, with a prevailing concern for the tension between the element of chance and the artist’s control. Early in his career, while painting on newspaper, he accidentally punctured the surface—an entirely chance event that he would transform into a formal, repetitive operation. He began a career-long study of the violent encounter with the surface of the painting, primarily through the creation of holes and cuts. Painting in vivid color and forming abstract forms with irregularly patterned holes, Shimamoto found that his gestures left a record of the artist’s physical action and gave the image a performative element. He eventually expanded his practice into live performance, often staging the creation of his paintings for a live audience.” [credit]

Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City” from The Practice of Everyday Life (1980)

a white man in glasses and dark blazer

Michel de Certeau – French Jesuit philosopher and social theorist (1925-1986)

Certeau is often referenced for his essay, “Walking in the City,” in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980).

In this essay he elaborates on an analogy between urban systems and language, with improvisational walking (shortcuts, wandering, etc) being like turns of phrase, inside jokes, or stories. He states, “The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered.”

He describes the city as “a space of enunciation,” where walkers demonstrate possibilities through their walking choices. He states, “The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to ‘turns of phrase’ or ‘stylistic figures.’ There is a rhetoric of walking.”

Jonathan L. Best writes a nice analysis of the essay here.

Pamela Z, Site Reading (2011)

[credit]

“Composer/performer Pamela Z will lead participants on a walk that creates musical scores from the graphic features (micro and macro) of downtown Manhattan. Participants will form a roving experimental sound and performance ensemble that will interpret and play the neighborhood’s building facades, sidewalk hardware, public art and street markings to make a contrapuntal, chance-based chorus.

This walk holds 12 people and is part of Urban Design Week 2011, organized by The Institute for Urban Design.

Click here to see photos from “Site Reading.””

“Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She’s created installation works and has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, The MAP Fund, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship.Pamela’s website”

Benjamin Patterson, Man Who Runs (1963)

This work was presented as a map of the midtown New York Public Library, with arrows showing the route to run, from the main entrance up to the third floor and out again.

Critic Lori Waxman compares this score to Robert Filliou’s One-Minute Scenario (1963), and points out how race and place deeply affect these scores. Filliou is a white French Protestant with a glass eye referencing a hotel, while Patterson is a Black man and references the library.

 

Credit: Waxman, Lori. Keep Walking Intently: The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus. Sternberg Press, 2017. Page 232.

Jeanne-Claude and Christo, The Gates (1979-2005)

orange gates in NYC central park

Jeanne-Claude and Christo – The Gates

[credit]

“The installation in Central Park was completed with the blooming of the 7,503 fabric panels on February 12, 2005. The 7,503 gates were 4.87 meters (16 feet) tall and varied in width from 1.68 to 5.48 meters (5 feet 6 inches to 18 feet) according to the 25 different widths of walkways, on 37 kilometers (23 miles) of walkways in Central Park. Free hanging saffron colored fabric panels, suspended from the horizontal top part of the gates, came down to approximately 2.1 meters (7 feet) above the ground. The gates were spaced at 3.65 meter (12 foot) intervals, except where low branches extended above the walkways. The gates and the fabric panels could be seen from far away through the leafless branches of the trees. The work of art remained for 16 days, then the gates were removed and the materials recycled.”

Francisca Benítez, “Property Lines, New York” (2008)

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76 floor rubbings
made on the sidewalks of New York
18″ x 24″, graphite on paper, 2008
Edition of 3

There are seventy rubbings in the series and they were installed as a grid on the wall, with varying dimensions depending on the location. The simple act of tracing in this set of walking-based drawings asks questions about borders, public versus private space, and how people mark space.

—

“Francisca Benitez (b. 1974, Chile) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, New York (2014); Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago, Chile (2013); Die Ecke, Santiago, Chile (2011); and Nada.Lokal, Vienna, Austria (2009). Notable group exhibitions include Mapping Brooklyn, Brooklyn Historical Society and BRIC House, Brooklyn (2015); Efemérides, Museo Histórico Nacional, Santiago, Chile (2014); Pier 54, High Line Art, New York (2014); One Minute Film Festival 2003 – 2012, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2013); The Street Files, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2011); and Contaminaciones Contemporáneas, Museu de Arte Contemporánea da USP, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2010). Her work has been featured in major international exhibitions including the Bienal de la Habana, Cuba (2015); Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Portugal (2013) the Beijing Biennale, China (2009); and the LA Frewaves 10th biennial of film, video and new media, Los Angeles (2006).” (credit)

Tim Brennan, Vedute Manoeuvre (2011)

Tim Brennan performing his ‘Vedute’ Manoeuvre outside the Gervasuti Foundation on 01/06/2011 as part of ‘The Knowledge’ exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale, curated by James Putnam, assistant curator Eiko Honda

“This performance and publication formed an aspect of the Exhibition ‘The Knowledge’ (a group exhibition of international artists curated by James Putnam) exhibited in the 54th Venice Biennale at Gervasuti Foundation. Brennan was specifically interested in the idea of the physical and psychological ‘view’ of an environment and how it might affect our knowledge of a place. This is especially pertinent to Venice when one considers the development of Venetian art. Canaletto was an exponent of what was to become known as ‘Veduta’ – a view painting (Plural: Vedute).

Brennan adopted a number of Canaletto images of St. Marks Square as way-markers to form the spine of a route to be walked by participants. The walker utilized a collection of view-cards (15x8x6” in all) each of which presents a different Canaletto (reproduction) view of the Palazzo. The reverse of each view-card carries a quotation that contrasts that of Caneletto’s image whilst keying into the City’s fictional and factual past. (e.g.the Camponile/bell tower is coupled with a Marinetti quote relating to the Futurist manifesto being launched from the site in 1910).

‘Vedute’ has been performed on several occasions by groups to tour St. Mark’s Square
This involves them reading the cards aloud. The periods of travel between each station enables conversational exchanges, attention to the built environment and everyday phenomena. In this way the artwork sucks the ‘everyday’ into its framework.

A performance at the opening of ‘The Knowledge’ involved Brennan orchestrating participants to read from the cards aloud whilst being transported on a workman’s barge” [credit]

person holding an image of a Venetian tower in front of the tower

Tim Brennan – Vedute Manoeuvre (2011)

“Tim Brennan’s performance-led practice has been based around walking for over two decades. He has created over forty major works, which have ranged from a re-walking of the Jarrow March entitled, ‘Crusade’ to what might be described as guided tours concerning subjects and locations, from all of the angels on display in the British Museum (‘Museum of Angels’) to St Mark’s Square in Venice (‘Vedute’). Brennan has created such cultural counter-histories for both elevated and unexpected situations by inhabiting received stories as well as forging wholly new ones.

More recently, he has examined the idea of Northumbria as a distinct cultural region, walking through and photographing the territories defined by that ancient term. This broadened into an investigation of ‘the idea of North’, as colleague Peter Davidson has described it. In 2012, Brennan created a digital guided tour for the Durham Miners Gala, to be followed from one’s phone or mobile device.

In ‘Walk On’, Brennan presents several works including his longest completed walking work, ‘Vedute Manoeuvre’, and ‘iAmbic Pedometer’, a durational iPhone video that records his walking through Sunderland with semi-coherent mumblings that refer to both Wordsworth’s compositional strategy and to the sonic poetry of Kurt Schwitters.

Brennan’s current project – one might almost call it a campaign – entitled ‘Roman Runner’ involves the artist envisaging running the entire circumference of the Roman Empire. To date, he has traversed Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall as ultra-marathon manoeuvres. He also presents a compendium of his publications and guide books. Publishing, in tandem with walking, have been critical components of Brennan’s practice throughout his career. The two are inextricably bound together in his oeuvre.” [credit]

Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970)

man walking down the side of a building

“The work saw a solitary dancer, secured by harnesses, around the hips and waist, attached to a single cable, walk down the side of the building at a ninety degree angle to the wall. Compelled by gravity, but restrained by the harnesses, hoists and straps used to secure him, the performer exerted considerable effort as he performed the normally mundane task of walking. … Man Walking Down the Side of a Building was one of Brown’s series of ‘Equipment Pieces’, which had initially used mountaineering equipment to construct hoists, pulleys and restraints to enable movement in unusual spaces, or in ways, which put the performers’ bodies at odds with gravity. In keeping with the relative simplicity of the equipment used, Brown also had the performer of this piece wear casual clothing and to perform to the ambient sounds surrounding the building.”

“Her intention was not to create a sense of theatricality but to draw attention to the simple and natural act of walking through a situation in an unnatural scenario. A key element of the work was its instructional nature; while all choreography is arguably instructional at one level, the simplicity of Brown’s instructions – to walk down the side of a building – placed the emphasis on the act of movement, rather than on its motivation or any kind of narrative. No particular instructions were given for how the performer should move, leaving them open to focus entirely on their own physical reaction to the duress of walking in this unusual position. This was characteristic of Brown’s work within the Judson Dance Theatre, which she helped form in the 1960s, and beyond, where she focused on everyday movements and their relation to dance through emphasis on individual gestures. Brown’s creation of choreography which focused on simple, singular movements also facilitated its capacity for re-enactment by making clear the integral elements of the work – a single performer walking down the exterior side of a building – but leaving enough fluidity for the transferal of those actions into different times and spaces.”

“By taking the universally recognisable act of walking and creating a scenario in which that act must be performed differently – in this case, at a ninety degree angle to the normal walking position – Brown remained focused not on the specificities of the space in which the performer acted but the precision of the actions which they undertook. Brown framed an everyday action as choreography and, in then re-contextualising it, drawing attention to the specificity of the movement under stress, she re-framed that action as performance, challenging the audience to consider the expansion of the site of dance into the world around them.”

– Acatia Finbow, June 2016

Trisha Brown, Walking on the Wall (1971)

people walking sideways on a wall

Trisha Brown – Walking on the Wall 1971

Walking on the Wall (1971) premiered at the Whitney and was performed again in 2010 during the Off the Wall exhibition at the Whitney. Trisha Brown originally performed the indoor work herself with her troupe, involved mounted tracks, ropes, and harnesses.

two people walking sideways on a wall

Trisha Brown – Walking on the Wall 1971 – detail

JeeYeun Lee, Walking Detroit (2017-18)

This book brings together documentation of work made in and about Detroit from 2017 to 2018. It includes writing and images from pieces including: “Walking Detroit” (2017-2018), “Michigan Avenue: Hart Plaza, Detroit, MI to 47330 Michigan Avenue, Canton, MI” (2017), “Unsettling: A Walk through Cranbrook” (2018), and “Architextural Disruptions” (2018). Appendices include slides from a research presentation on Detroit history, and a bibliography.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction

SECTION 1: DETROIT

Walking Detroit (2017-2018)
Woodward Avenue
Interlude: Installation April 4, 2017
Jefferson Avenue
Gratiot Avenue
Grand River Avenue
Interlude: My Mother’s Store
Michigan Avenue
Michigan Avenue: Hart Plaza, Detroit, MI to 47330 Michigan Avenue, Canton, MI (2017)
Interlude: Installation December 8, 2017
Dearborn & Inkster
Bloomfield Hills
Interlude: Installation August 25, 2018

SECTION 2: CRANBROOK

Unsettling: A Walk through Cranbrook (2018)
Architextural Disruptions (2018)
Interlude: All Times Exist Now

APPENDICES

Appendix A: Research Presentation
Appendix B: Bibliography