Category Archives: Video or Film

Susan Stockwell “Taking a Line for a Walk” (2002-03)

Taking a Line for a Walk from Susan Stockwell on Vimeo.

“12 minute film, 2002

A film documenting a performance called Taking a Line For a Walk by artist Susan Stockwell. It shows a line being drawn around Stockwell in South London. Susan, with her Line Drawing machine, followed the boundary of old Stockwell and left a continuous line with temporary white paint. It lasted for 2 weeks, was 2.7 miles long and took 3 hours to draw. The idea was to make a work where a little known area of London was defined and mapped physically for all to see. The map was taken into 3 dimensions on a life size scale and turned into a walking drawing, a trace of an idea and a performance.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’ which Susan did with pupils from Stockwell Park School.
Shot by Polly Nash, edited in collaboration with Susan Stockwell and produced by Spectacle Productions.
spectacle.co.uk/catalogue_production.php?id=165

Images from the performance, Taking a Line for a Walk have been published in the book, The Art of Walking: a field guide by David Evans Blackdog, 2013.
blackdogonline.com/all-books/the-art-of-walking.html”

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‘Taking a Line for Walk’ (2003) was a performance where the artist drew a white line around the area of Stockwell in South London defining and mapping the district. The line was made with white poster paint and a Line Drawing Machine, it was 1.7 miles in length and lasted for 2 weeks. The idea was to physically define a little known area of London while also making a 3-dimensional walking drawing and a trace of an idea. It also references the artist’s name alluding to her identity and boundary setting.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’, which Susan ran with students from Stockwell Park School.
A 12-minute film was made that documents the performance, also called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk’.

‘Line Drawing’ is a 2-minute film that examines the line as it’s being drawn in ‘Taking a Line For a Walk’. The film concentrates on the essence of the line, the variety of marks, speed, character, rhythm and pavement surfaces. It creates a mesmeric, meditative and beautiful reflection of the drawings process and everyday pavements, seldom considered or seen. It’s sometimes difficult to know if the artist is taking the line for a walk or the line is leading the artist; perhaps a metaphor for artistic process and those magical moments when the art work takes on a life of its own.

Film shot by Polly Nash, edited by Polly Nash and Susan Stockwell, produced by Spectacle Productions. (credit)

Matthew McCaslin “Check It Out” (1998)

stack of tvs

Check it Out, 1998; TVs, VCRs, handtruck, clock, electric liights, electrical hardware. Photo: Courtesy Feigen Contemporary

This messing looking sculpture features TVs stacked on a rolling cart in combination with other objects. The screens show shots of urban commuters hustling to and from locations. It showcases the walking ritual of commuting. (credit: Walk Ways catalog)

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“In the beginning, video artists used television sets simply to present videos tapes; later, people realized the monitor had its own potentially sculptural presence. Matthew McCaslin, who has focused on the technological infrastructure of everyday life (his installations bring into view wires, pipes, studs and other normally hidden stuff), has filled two galleries with sculptures that incorporate television sets. Surrealistic essays on the mechanization and the mediation of modern experience, they range in tone from dryly clever to mysteriously meditative.

Though the materials used are similar, Mr. McCaslin’s shows in Chelsea and SoHo are as different as night and day, literally. The pieces in Feigen’s well-lighted space deal mostly with work, transportation and other daily processes. At the entrance, a boombox in a wheelbarrow plays the sound of a cement mixer. In ”Check It Out,” a stack of four televisions broadcasting tapes of pedestrians hurrying in an airport is punningly strapped to an industrial hand truck.” [credit]

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“Check It Out has a single stack of four video monitors accompanied by a large clock face sitting on the floor to its left, and by two yellow construction lanterns, one on the ground beside the clock, the other hanging over the far side of the screens. The screens project the image a shifting mass of people as viewed through security cameras in shopping malls or train stations. The mass of bodies, filmed in such an indiscriminate manner, based upon spatial position within a particular building, becomes both a current of human activity and a narrative of human reflection when shown in intermittent movement or listless waiting. There is a great pleasure in being able to view this mass as it mills about, and then sometimes one “actor” steps close to the camera lens, even notices it, and shows the depth of individual self-consciousness in a tic, a nervous smile, or a look of slight horror. When the film loop ends, as in other works, these images are replaced with a fine mist of static, which tends to heighten the sense of visual pastiche formed by the combination of recognizable entities with a nonrepresentational depiction of space. The visual images and even the flow of static enter into the context of narrative and drama, made physically approachable by the lamps and by the constantly moving clock beside the screens.”

Gibson, David. “Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 26, no. 2, 2004, pp. 66–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246367. Accessed 17 Jun. 2022.

Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez Jonas “Migration” (2000)

Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez Jonas, Migration (1999)

Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez Jonas, Migration (1999)

[CREDIT]

2 channel video playing on two monitors side by side, 58:03 minute loop, Dimensions variable

Migration is a collaboration between Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez Jonas. Playing the childhood game of Follow the Leader on a beach, the artists videotaped each other from behind as the follower records the leader. The videos simultaneously play out on two monitors turned on their side. The monitors’ proximity fuses the two perspectives into one walk. As the pursuer’s foot alters or erases the pursued’s footprint, it appears to step into the next monitor.

Having traveled far from their home countries, the artists depict their movements as a series of steps where, at different times, one partner leads and the other follows.  The actions within Migration speak to the dynamic and continuous negotiations that happen within a relationship.

Bruce Nauman “Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square” (1968)

man walking

Bruce Nauman

choreographed by Meredith Monk

[CREDIT]

In his black-and-white film, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, Bruce Nauman does just that. Placing one foot in front of the other, he walks forwards and backwards, with a pronounced swinging of his hips, around the edge of a square of masking tape affixed to his studio’s concrete floor. The silence of his studio is broken only by the rapid clicking sound made by the rolling film, which calls attention to the camera itself. Rather than ensuring that it follows his movements, the artist leaves the camera fixed in one place. As a result, he sometimes disappears off-screen as he treads the parts of the perimeter outside of the camera’s frame.

Nauman made Walking early in his career and at a time when the notion of turning the camera exclusively onto oneself was still relatively new. During this period, he and many other artists were increasingly broadening the definition of art by incorporating themselves and the activities and materials of daily life into their work. While the film may seem simple on its surface, with it, Nauman broke with the conventions of film, television, and art making itself. It offers little narrative or illusion; what’s more, it takes viewers into a space they would not typically see: the private realm of the artist’s studio. Walking is based on a premise Nauman developed shortly after completing his MFA, in 1966, which underscores all of his work: “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”1

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller “Hillclimbing” (1999)

This is a video work to be watched on a monitor while wearing headphones. Participants hear the artists walking toward the top of a snow-covered hill. We see the ground, the sky, and the couple’s dog. We hear the sounds and occasional talking.

Further reading:

  • “Walk Ways” exhibition catalog. Essay by Stuart Horodner. Foreword by Judith Richards.