Category Archives: Leading and Following

Sophie Calle, The Shadow (1981)

“At my request, my mother went to a detective agency called “Duluc”. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities and to provide photographic evidence of my existence. The investigation was conducted on April 16, 1981.” [credit]

“In April 1981, a detective followed the French artist Sophie Calle through the streets of Paris for one day. Hired by her mother at the artist’s request, the detective logged her movements and photographed her activities as she, without his knowledge, recorded her experience of being watched. She later exhibited the reports side-by-side in her piece “La Filature” (“The Shadow,” 1981), which highlights Calle’s method of working over three decades. Staging provocations resembling seduction, documenting them with snapshot photography and a forensic first-person point of view, she crosses the thresholds of voyeur and exhibitionist, public and private, conceptual control and chance.” [credit]

Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Rape (1969)

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“Lennon and Yoko Ono made a 77-minute-long conceptual film in 1969 called Rape. Shot mainly in close-up with a hand-held camera, the film features the single action of a small film-making crew coming upon a woman in a London park and following her through the park, along streets and into her apartment. We are the voyeur and the violator in this symbolic form of video assault. The woman speaks a foreign language and cannot communicate with the crew in English, signifying the helplessness and isolation of the victim.

According to Ono, Rape was a candid recording by cinematographer Nic Knowlton of a woman who was not a voluntary participant of this project. The film was seen as a commentary on Ono’s experience with the press due to her high-profile relationship with Lennon, criticising the lack of privacy that celebrity fetishisation leads to. In later years, it has become a textbook example of the phenomenon of “the male gaze” and how the institution of cinema has mistreated women.

The ideas in the film are theoretically interesting and some of its execution is fascinating, Rape ultimately becomes an endurance test for the viewer because of the 77-minute runtime. However, this is exactly the purpose of such cinematic theses. Lennon and Ono manage to create an atmosphere of discomfort and distress where the audience feels like they are complicit in the terrible crime.”

Like other walking works that involve following without consent, this work is problematic. Read more in this exercise.

Christine Hill, Tourguide? (1999)

person waiting in doorway with clipboard

Christine Hill “Tourguide?” (1999)

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“Throughout the summer of 1999, the storefront of Deitch Projects at 76 Grand Street will be the center of operations for Tourguide?, Christine Hill’s functional enterprise specializing in improvisational walking tours. Acting as a catalyst for new experiences in the Big Apple, Hill (b.1968, Binghamton, NY) and her Tourguide? participants infiltrate the city and engage in dialogues about New York’s inner workings, providing an entertaining and humorous alternative to the popular, commercial tours of New York City.

Hill’s selection of offbeat sites highlights aspects of New York that most guidebooks do not, embellishing them with anecdotes and group discussion about their cultural ramifications. During the two-hour tours, groups are guided primarily through downtown locations, but Hill also offers excursions to other parts of the city and augments the scheduled tours to include guest guides, theme events, treasure hunts and special excursions.”

 

Philip Corner, 4th Finale (1962)

a sheet of paper with handwriting on the right side

Philip Corner, “4th Finale” (1962)

Score: “Members of a marching band, each playing to their own tune, leave the stage and whatever building they are in, followed by the audience.”

Credit: Waxman, Lori. Keep Walking Intently: The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus. Sternberg Press, 2017. Page 266.

“4th finale was performed by Lynghøj School Brass Band at Stændertorvet. Each performer was instructed to choose an action to perform, whether this was constant, intermittent or variable was up to the performer himself. The tune or sound could consist of a repetition, a cyclic progression or an evolving note, and could be freely invented or quoted from any source.

The performers were instructed to continue their chosen sound, while slowly beginning to leave the area. As the orchestra left Stændertorvet, spectators followed in procession down the street towards the Viking Ship Museum.” [credit]

 

Eric Andersen, The MassDress (1985)

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“Costume by Eric Andersen
Performed by The Group Berzerk

During the art fair Art in 1980 in New York, Gallery Interart from Washington arranged a sensational Fluxus Buffet from October 10 through 18, 1980. The following artists participated: Eric Andersen, George Brecht, Joe Jones, La Monte Young, Yasunao Tone, Nam June Paik, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Daniel Spoerri, Emmett Williams, AY-O, Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Yoshimasa Wada and Bob Watts. For the occasion Eric Andersen produced a Dinner Dress for 30 people. The costume is part of a series of possible shared costumes for which function overrules convention. Among these costumes are a TV Costume for 1 to 10 people, a Soccer Costume for 11 people, an Industry Costume for 5 to 10,000 people, a Big City Costume for 5 to 10 million people, an Erotic Costume for 3 to 99 people, a Witness/Victim Costume for more than 2 people and a Debate Costume for fewer than 179 people.

In 1984 in Copenhagen, the group Berzerk performed The Idle Walk of the Year for Eric Andersen – a procession stretching from The Ethnographic Collection at The National Museum through The National Bank to the courtyard of Amalienborg Castle. During the Festival of Fantastics, Berzerk performed with the 30 people costume carrying out an extensive choreography. Initially, the performers put on every second part of the costume, conducting a procession across Stændertorvet. Then audience members were invited to enter the remaining fifteen costume parts. The ensuing procession climbed ladders on fire department vehicles and stretched through city streets, alleys, busses and shops. The whole performance lasted more than two hours.

Eric Andersen’s description of The MassDress“

Robert Watts and students, The Human Celebration (1969)

class photo

Credit: Hendricks, Geoffrey. Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia and Rutgers University 1958-1972. Rutgers University Press (2003).

Francis Alys, Guards (2004-5)

Marching British Guards

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” “A journey implies a destination, so many miles to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point along the way.” Francis Alys, 2005

Francis Alys walks a lot. The city is his open-air studio. ‘Guards’ (2004) is one component of ‘Seven Walks’, the body of works commissioned by Artangel and developed over the course of five years spent walking through the streets of London, which includes paintings, drawings, and works in moving image. ‘Guards’ draws upon many of Alys’s long-term concerns: how street-scapes structure behavior, the unspoken rhythms of the city; and the use of daily walking to encounter new phenomena and ideas. The artist provided a series of instructions which form the basis of the film: 64 Coldstream guards enter separately in the City of London, unaware of one another’s route; the guards wander through the City looking for one another; upon meeting, they fall into step and march together; when a square measuring 8 by 8 Guards is built, the complete formation marches towards the closest bridge; as they step on to the bridge, the guards break step and disperse.”

a marching british guard

Francis Alys, Guards (2004-5)

 

La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #10

typed words on a piece of paper

La Monte Young “Composition 1960 #10” (1960) typewriter ink on paper, 3 3/8 × 8 9/16in.

La Monte Young‘s Composition 1960 #10, simply states, “Draw a straight line and follow it.” Young (1935-) was a well-known member of Fluxus.

Credit: Waxman, Lori. Keep Walking Intently: The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus. Sternberg Press, 2017. Page 206.

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person painting a line with their head

Nam June Paik “Zen for Head” (1962) [credit]

“During the first Fluxus concert, held in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1962, Paik performed La Monte Young’s text-based score Composition 1960 #10 (to Bob Morris), which reads, “Draw a straight line and follow it.” Paik dipped his head into a bowl of ink and proceeded to produce a line with his hands, head, and necktie as he moved down the length of a large sheet of paper laid on the floor. This performance—which gained notoriety for Paik’s rather flamboyant interpretation and execution—became known as Zen for Head.” [credit]

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Carmen Papalia, Mobility Device (2019)

Carmen Papalia with a 18-piece band

Carmen Papalia – Mobility Device – 2021

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“Carmen Papalia is an artist and disability activist who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to navigate his access to public space, art institutions, and visual culture. His socially-engaged practice expresses his resistance of support options that promote ablest concepts of normalcy, like white canes and other impairment-specific accommodations that only temporarily bridge barriers to participation in an otherwise inaccessible, policy-based system. Papalia designs experiences that invite participants to expand their perceptual mobility and to claim access to public and institutional spaces.

For the High Line, Papalia presents Mobility Device, an innovative, collaborative performance in which he is accompanied by a marching band that plays a site-reactive score as guidance for navigating his surroundings. The work transforms the white cane—a symbol of someone with visual impairment—into a collective, sonic experience that opens up ways of thinking about care, collaboration, and a normative hierarchy of the senses. Papalia will bring Mobility Device to the High Line with the Hungry March Band, an 18-person ensemble founded in 1997 for the Mermaid Parade. With this work, he urges visitors to experience public spaces through the non-visual world.”

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]