Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses an original methodology (which I have termed ethno-situationism) that asks whether intentional and performative acts of walking can effect changes in the attitudes and perceptions of walkers to their neighbourhood and environment that might encourage dialogue and exchange.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss the development of an original methodology created during my doctoral research. This methodology (ethno-situationism) asks whether intentional and performative acts of walking can effect changes in the attitudes and perceptions of walkers to their neighbourhood and environment that might encourage dialogue and exchange. I will focus on the collaborative, participatory process of the research which involved recruiting thirty volunteers who conducted and subsequently responded to creative interventions in their everyday walks.

I created opportunities for volunteers to 'play' through interruptions in their everyday walking habits, drawing on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais, the Situationists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and David Seamon. This is further informed by theoretical perspectives concerned with the creation of noticing, noticing the noticing, and aesthetic 'moments' of surprise and wonder emerging from the familiarity of the everyday as proposed by Edward Casey, Jane Bennett, Tim Brennan, Rita Felski and Henri Lefebvre.

The process of this enactment creates what I term the i-don't-know-space, which holds the potential to encourage a receptivity to new encounters through active listening and noticing, as proposed by Gemma Coradi Fiumara and Geraldine Finn. My research asks whether such 'ethical encounters' may be instrumental in the creation of new understandings of the ways in which we form knowledge and relationships with our environment and with people within that environment.

I will then discuss further walkworks/interventions such as the Chip Walk, Phone Text Walk and the Sit-U-ationist Sofa. Bibliographic references available on request.

Paper short abstract:

Contrasting the didactic attention-directing devices of experts to the free-roaming and 'poor pedagogies' (Masschelein 2010) of discovery and open attentiveness among curious local explorers, this paper affirms the value of the education of attention in holistic and transformative learning

Paper long abstract:

The caves in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) have been frequented for different purposes: as a refuge, a place to keep livestock, for parties and feasts, as a ritual space and for recreation and exploration by children and youth. These experiences have fostered an intimate knowledge of caves, fauna and geology as well as their ancestral traces enabling casual archaeological finds. This knowledge and experience is juxtaposed to that of undergraduate students, undertaking research-led interuniversity fieldwork in archaeology and anthropology, introduced to caves and archaeological and heritage sites in the process. This paper details the embodied knowledge of Majoreros who 'notice' caves and discusses how life experience and lay understandings of heritage and patrimony are shaped by local government and scientific activity, including this encounter with research-led teaching. Here we contrast didactic attention-directing devices of experts to the free-roaming and 'poor pedagogies' (Masschelein 2010: 283) of discovery and open attentiveness that act as more generic "exercises of an ethos or attitude" among curious local explorers. These implicit pedagogies are unveiled to critically evaluate the means and ends that make unfamiliar landscapes familiar and how they shape persons in the process. The paper affirms the value of the education of attention (Ingold 2001; 2017) in holistic and transformative learning and explores the potential of participative approaches for research aimed at meaningful place-making.

Paper short abstract:

The paper employs the metaphor of terma or treasure, which Nyingma Buddhists employ to reinterpret teachings, to argue that activities involving walking have enabled the survival of a Nepali research assistant and his community through allowing him to reinterpret the present to make their future.

Paper long abstract:

Nyingma Buddhists subscribe to the notion of terma or treasure. This consists of religious relics or teachings which were hidden by Guru Rinpoche either as material objects or in the mind-streams of ancient lamas which may subsequently be found by Tertons or treasure finders. Tertons can then use terma to reinterpret previous Buddhist teachings, to adapt them to current contexts.

This paper will explore how the idea of terma aided a Northwest Nepali research assistant to reproduce himself and his community through the last fifty years of Nepal's accelerated social change, as well as the role of walking within this process.

At the age of twelve, Tshewang Lama walked with his lama father to India so that he himself could have his first inauguration into lamahood. His Buddhist education made him ideal as a research assistant for Professor Nancy Levine's infamous study of his polyandrous Nyinba community at the age of sixteen. This experience led to his traversing the Himalayas as a research assistant for a study of nomadic traders, as well as providing him with connections and experience to start a trekking company. Due to these connections he also made documentaries with Lonely Planet, had innovative ideas for trade, implemented development projects and was made Government Minister for his home area. Centring on my experience walking between intermontane Himalayan villages with Lama and twelve members of the local Communist party I will argue that walking has enabled him to find ways to extend his own, and his communities, existence.

Paper short abstract:

Media Arts staff from Sheffield Hallam University discuss group cohesion through the activates of the Walking Arts Research Group and reflect upon walking as a vehicle for creative practice. Artistic outputs including film and sound work show another type of story-telling - the story of being there.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Walking Arts Research Group' at Sheffield Hallam University provides a collaborative space for creative practice investigation linked to a range of walking practices.

Creativity thrives in a stress-free, contemplative environment, something often eroded in the faced-paced digital world of the contemporary academic institution. This environment can have negative effects on inter-personal relations for both staff and students. The benefits of the group were found to include enhanced group cohesion, increased trust and understanding. Stories began with shared workplace experiences, and developed into stories of personal histories. From this new shared stories grow.

As media arts practitioners the artistic work produced during the walks provides another type of story. Art practice involves an act of immersive engagement with ones environment. The film is not a recording of the place so much as an encounter with ones environment that is explored through the medium of a recording device. Later, by means of artistic interventions, the art work builds a story of the experience and the memory of the encounter that is expressed through the artefact. From this process we find new ways of seeing. The art work is not an interpretation, nor does it require translation. It is an experience that communicates by its own means.

The paper, that expands a critique of the time-compressed work-place and the nature of creative practice, will be accompanied by short extracts of experimental film and sound art that have been produced through the activities of the walking group.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores methodological challenges and proposed solutions for studying the creative process, combining narrative inquiry, walking methods and co-creation, drawing on the framework of mediation as a way of traversing the inner and outer spaces in the context of making art.

Paper long abstract:

Creative processes may require both a creative engagement with the world outside and a withdrawal into interiority or a relatively solitary space of focused engagement and immersion. Both of these aspects featured prominently in the descriptions of the creative process by Japanese artists in Osaka I worked with, who were engaged in a wide range of contemporary art practices, including painting, contemporary dance, video installations, making of wearable objects, and combinations of these. Building on the previous work with the artists I am now embarking a new project, which combines phenomenological inquiries into the experience of making with an ethnography of the social and cultural context of this work, drawing on the foundation of existential anthropology. While collaborative space of the art event often creates and important frame for making an artwork, all the descriptions emphasized the importance of creation of an interior sphere, an interiority, for the process of making. This paper explores some of the methodological challenges and proposed solutions for studying the creative process of making art, combining narrative inquiry, walking with recording and co-creation. It draws on the framework of mediation as a way of traversing the inner and outer spaces in the context of the creative process of making art.

Paper short abstract:

The paper uses applied observing participation of tango teacher-training to reflect on the transmission of walking as a form of intangible heritage, the nature of embodied research, and the difficulties around writing about the doubly virtual nature of dance as intangible cultural heritage.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines teacher-training in tango as the communication of walking with tradition. It is a rhythmic walking ethnography with suspension, pause and a partner. This apprenticeship took place in Wimbledon, London, over an intense period of two years and involved training, practice and instruction in the movement of the tango body, tango history and development from Buenos Aires to London, as well as the distinct style of the tango teacher's school or style translated for a British audience. This is a gripping tale of metatarsals, migration, and violent folklore that changes the landscape in which we move - not just the dance floor, and alters the ways in which we move through it - not just with our feet. There is a virtual and imaginative quality to this orally and physically narrated subject matter that engages and frustrates the dancing public and has now been accepted as a distinct tango school or franchise in the UK specialising in improvised movement rather than rehearsed choreography. The paper uses this applied observing participation to reflect on the transmission of this technique of walking as a form of intangible heritage, the nature of embodied research as a neophyte tango teacher, and the difficulties around writing about the doubly virtual nature of dance as intangible cultural heritage.