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- Convenors:
-
Christian Ernsten
(Maastricht University)
Nick Shepherd (Aarhus University)
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- Format:
- Roundtables
- Stream:
- Disciplinary and methodological discussions:
- Location:
- Aula 17
- Sessions:
- Monday 15 April, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
We are interested in exploring the politics and poetics of walking as a form of embodied research methodology. We are engaged by notions of the trail and the pilgrimage. We are also engaged by the idea of walking as a way of encountering the emergent landscapes of the Anthropocene.
Long Abstract:
In this panel and roundtable, we are interested in exploring the politics and poetics of walking as a form of embodied research methodology. Taking points of inspiration from STS, artistic research methods, practice as research, and the debate around decolonial aesthesis, and from disciplinary practices like archaeological field walking, we are interested in what it means for scholars, artists, curators and activists to walk together as a form of research practice. We are engaged by notions of the trail and the pilgrimage, and by the parallels between walking and story-telling or narrative. We are also engaged by the idea of walking as a way of encountering the emergent landscapes of the Anthropocene. What happens when we come out of the white cube of the seminar room? How does walking open out to forms of affective and sensorial research? What new forms of curiosity are aroused by the craft of walking? How does walking as research method cut across disciplinary boundaries and enable new collaborations and visions? How does walking challenge embedded dichotomies between mind and body, reason and emotion?
We invite papers from scholars, artists, curators, activists and practitioners of all kinds to join us in this exploration of walking. On the completion fo the conference, we invite you to walk with us to Finisterre.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 15 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper follows the ethnographic routes opened by a holy procession in a small Aegean island. Long-lasting interaction, between the ethnographer and the research participants, will give the frame for discussing a number of ethical, experiential and methodological issues.
Paper long abstract:
Fourteen years of ethnographic fieldwork are projected into the dominant social and ritual event of the community studied; that is the yearly holy procession venerating Saint Virgin, but also tracking important landmarks for the island's local history and identities.
My own gradual integration in the procession has proved crucial for the development and the completion of fieldwork research. Symbolically, this has been elaborated in and out of the community's body: walking along together, getting more and more inside serpentine and circular collective trails of pilgrimage, and then out, back inside the households for listening to stories about ancestors and landmarks; then out again, walking alone in the countryside, recalling and trying to understand my interlocutors' collective memory.
Through this paper I'm engaged by my own relative position as a fieldworker in this collective bodily practice; initially out of it, as a reporter and an outsider, and then inside for the long years of fieldwork research. Ritual walking, following the religious practices of the community studied, has emerged as a cognitive practice and integration tool for long ethnographic fieldwork.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores running practices in the urban setting from a posthumanist point of view. The aim is to understand how bodies, cities and technologies are becoming constantly through movement. Mobile interviews (running and walking) are part of the ethnographic approach. Activist bodies emerge.
Paper long abstract:
Posthumanism poses an intellectual challenge when we try to link its theoretical postulates to everyday empirical realities. Interested in the potentia of bodies and the embodied processes of becoming, during 2016-2018 I carried out ethnographic fieldwork with urban runners in Barcelona, using combined mobile methodologies to explore how human and non-human bodies emerge constantly in its intra-action (Barad, 2007) of daily life practices. Departing from the analytical gaze of continuity 'continuum bodycity', I carried out in-motion interviews (running and walking) as part of the ethnographic work, to activate the analyses of the flows and continuities established in the relationships between different materialities. This also gave way to the analysis of the procedural character of digital technologies during the practice of running in everyday life. The senses and perceptions were key elements to rethink the body beyond the limits of the skin; also the use and mediation of digital technologies was an element that showed how bodies are reconfigured from control and systematization practices (self-tracking) or the connection they establish with the urban space from the extension/decrease of the capacities of the bodies linked to the elements of the environment (climate, urban textures, objects). These discoveries lead us to consider the body in movement as a methodological tool that adheres relational and activist dimensions to the study of corporality within feminist epistemological approaches.
Paper short abstract:
Paths shaped by human feet in the landscape constitute a distinct 'movement heritage' that is ephemeral, often neglected, and difficult to handle within established heritage management regimes. In an ongoing research project we walk along tracks and trails as a method to understand this heritage.
Paper long abstract:
Landscapes which are commonly understood as wilderness or 'nature' are in fact in most cases influenced by human actions and movements. Such landscapes often contain comprehensive traces and remains from different kinds of human motion. Paths, tracks and trails have been shaped by people walking, hiking, exploring, training and in other ways moving by foot through the landscape in the past and the present. These traces represent a distinct kind of cultural heritage, a 'movement heritage' (Svensson, Sörlin & Wormbs 2016) that is ephemeral, often neglected, and difficult to handle within established heritage management regimes. This paper will present an ongoing research project on the 'movement heritage' of walking trails in Sweden, carried out by Sverker Sörlin (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Daniel Svensson (Chalmers University of Technology), and myself. The project is funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board, with the aim to explore the nature of heritages based on the practice of walking. In this presentation I want to focus specifically on how we have chosen to use our own feet as a research tool; going walking along tracks and trails as a way to gain an understanding of this heritage of motion.
Ref: Svensson, D., Sörlin, S. & Wormbs, N. (2016). 'The movement heritage - scale, place, and pathscapes in Anthropocene tourism' in Gren, M and Huijbens, E (eds.), Tourism and the Anthropocene, London: Routledge, pp. 131-151.
Paper short abstract:
I propose to present the early stages of a study that concerns Mount Saint Peter as it is emerging as an Anthropocene landscape. I will focus on one of my central methodologies in this study that is walking as a way of understanding these different regimes of care.
Paper long abstract:
I propose to present the early stages of a study that concerns Mount Saint Peter as it is emerging as an Anthropocene landscape. Mount Saint Peter figure prominently in the history of the City of Maastricht and the Limburg region in general. It constitutes a hybrid landscape that present complex patchworks of land use, including nature reserves, archaeological sites, urban edges, industrial complexes, agricultural lands and leisure zones. Currently large-scale projects of nature engineering are underway, altering this post-industrial landscape fundamentally. These transitions present a key archive to analyze the shifts, transformations and internal workings of the discourses of heritage and nature development. One of my central concerns of the study is coming to an understanding of the biography of this mountain. Therefore, I examine the different regimes of care surrounding the conservation of the new co-existence of animals, plants, humans and technologies. In this presentation I will focus on one of my central methodologies in this study that is walking Mount Saint Peter as a way of understanding these different regimes of care.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation reports on the Table Mountain Walking Seminar, an annual event involving scholars, activists, artists and curators in Cape Town, South Africa.
Paper long abstract:
The Table Mountain Walking Seminar has become an annual event involving scholars, activists, artists and curators, walking together for a week along the chain of mountains south of Table Mountain, South Africa. Each seminar is themed, with the most recent (March 2018) being on "Fire and Water", picking up on the current water crisis in the city. We are interested in ideas of landscape as archive, and in exploring more embodied forms of research that take us outside of the "white cube" of the seminar room. We are also interested in bringing together a debate around environmental justice and the Anthropocene, with a debate around social justice and the lingering effects of apartheid. The Walking Seminar is a joint project of the author, plus the urbanist Christian Ernsten and the documentary photographer Dirk-Jan Visser.
Paper short abstract:
Early in the history of Iceland walking paths and riding trails were formed all over the country. I will talk about the network of these paths/trails, how they got lost and were spoiled, mainly in the last century, and how people are using them again.
Paper long abstract:
The first settlers of Iceland were farmers and it was necessary for them to know their neighbourhood well and even places that were far away. For these reasons long and short walking and riding trails were formed all over the country, between farms and districts and even over the highland.
In the first half of the 20th century the times did change quite quickly in Iceland so we can talk about a technical revolution during that period. Cars were imported, new roads were made and old trails were spoiled, got lost or disappeared.
In the last decades the increasing tourism in Iceland has changed the society quite a lot. The Icelanders and the foreign tourists are using the old paths and trails for walking, riding and cycling.
A few years ago I formed a team with two others and we have been writing a book about the network of walking paths and riding trails in the neighbourhood of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. This book will be published next year by The Iceland Tourism Association and will surely increase the use of the old trails.
This is a good example how ,,the old times" always come back again.
Paper short abstract:
Space, so Michel de Certeau, is a web of moving elements. Any movement leaves an imprint in the landscapes and the stories that circulate about them. Based on ethnographic research, this paper demonstrates three dimensions of collective and creative hiking practices.
Paper long abstract:
Space, so Michel de Certeau, is a web of moving elements. Space and landscape, paths, tracks and routes are continually changing, as people - and animals - are treading them. Any movement leaves an imprint in the landscapes and the stories that circulate about them.
The border-region between Austria, Italy and Slovenia is marked by the conflicts of the 20th century. This is the landscape where UNIKUM, the Cultural Centre at the University of Klagenfurt/ Celovec offers artistic hiking tours, passing de-populated Friulian villages, a almost equally depopulated airport, a ghost-bus, and the leftovers of thriving industries from an earlier era. Musicians, dance-performers, visual artists, actors, or philosophers provide entertainment along the way. Each walk ends with a meal.
Based on ethnographic research with UNIKUM, this paper demonstrates three dimensions of collective and creative hiking practices. First, social pleasure - moving the body, engaging in conversation inspired by the landscape and the signs set by UNIKUM and it's artist friends. Second, prayer and pilgrimage: At times, the groups are forming veritable processions, walking gives rise to a medidative, almost prayer-like mood. Third, artistic research: Preparing the stops requires intensive interaction with farmers, officials, administrators, pub-owners and many more. This interaction creates knowledge, which is transferred into practice and sometimes into poetic travel-guides. Altogether, the paper argues that this type of hiking practice encourages transformation: Participants and contributors experience the border landscape in a way that counters hegemonic national discourses with their clear distinctions between us and them.