Category Archives: Publications

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]

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

Alec Finlay “The Road North” 2010-2011

Whisky miniatures, poems-labels, rubber stamps, handwriting, pencil drawing

label on sign post and man drinking in nature pencil drawn map

[credit]

“Alec Finlay‘s ‘The Road North’ loosely echoes the seventeenth century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho’s work The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho’s work is one of the canonical works of Japanese literature, written as a prose and verse travel diary, in haiku form. It was written on a journey through Japan’s remote north­ eastern region of Tohoku.

Finlay’s work takes Basho’s work as a starting point which he freely adapts, echoing Basho’s thought that “every day is a journey, and the journey itself home”. ‘The Road North’ documents Finlay’s walking journey around Scotland. Each stopping point is marked by the consumption of a miniature bottle of whisky and a short haiku-style poem. The work offers up unexpected comparisons between Scotland and Japan: most obviously, between the urbanized, hard-headed south and a romantic, isolated north. Finlay combines wry wit and wonder in his multifaceted practice where walking and publishing play equally important roles.”

Wrights & Sites, “A Mis-Guide to Anywhere” 2006

[credit]

“Wrights & Sites are a group of artists and researchers whose collaborative work is focused on their relationships to walking, cities and landscape. The group was founded in 1997 by Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner.

They argue that “walking and exploring the everyday remains at the heart of all we do. What we make seeks to facilitate walker-artists, walker-makers and everyday pedestrians to become partners in ascribing significance to place. We employ disrupted walking strategies as tools for playful debate, collaboration, intervention and spatial meaning­ making. Our work, like walking, is intended to be porous”. Walking is accompanied by “dramaturgical strategies” – i.e. the outcomes of their works are often site-specific performances.

Their ‘Mis-guide to Anywhere’ is, they claim, “a utopian project for the recasting of a bitter world by disrupted walking”. Their work “links the tangible and the imagined” and is a form of “serious play”. It is an activity in which the role of the artist “might become that of guide, or mis­-guide, rather than the narrator or interpreter of a particular place”.

Wrights & Sites make use of the intellectual toolbox associated with the canon of writing about the role of ‘the flaneur’, in order to arm us for a consumerized and militarized world. Wrights & Sites observe that in this strange era of the twenty-first century, to go walking in many parts of the world, from war zones like Afghanistan through to most British city centres, is to be under continual surveillance.”