WALKING  AWAY

The project Walking Away serves as a means of cultivating the between spaces of pilgrimage and dérive (drifting) as an experiential practice.  Comprised from a series of long durational walks, images, and performative works, the project is an ongoing composite of discursive paths, situational absence, and inquiries into liminal space.

Work 1.   Circumambulating San Francisco

                winter solstice (2015, 2016)

On the longest night of the year, beginning at sunset and traversing approximately 40 miles until sunrise, the walking, disappearing, and encircling body shifts along the outer edges of the city.  The approximately 15 hour work/walking meditation contains a succession of 5 minute performative improvisations/actions along the overall circular route at timed stations, approximately once each hour.  Conceptually and physically, the project engages a discursive meditation on the rigors of stable presence and living absence in a changing city.

Work 2.    Shikoku Pilgrimage / Pathless Land

                (2015-16)

Over a two month period, researching and walking the 88 temple pilgrimage route encircling the island of Shikoku, in Japan (approximately 750 miles). The time was engaged through contrasting intervals of early morning and late night walks.  As a form of walking meditation, the act of “pilgrimage” was explored in relationship to the Situationist’s idea of “dérive” (drifting) and Jiddu Krishnamurtri’s notion that “truth is a pathless land”.  On an island of many paths, and as the pilgrimage has an elaborate history dating back to the 8th century and the Shingon Buddhist monk Kukai (774-835), and also that many parts of the island of Shikoku have a contrastingly modern and continually changing habitat, a sense of navigation was prevalent with religious ritual, trace existence, getting lost, and an intricate mixture of urban, rural, mountain, and oceanside landscapes. An underlying focus was an experiential inquiry to self power and other power.

Work 3.   Golden Gate Bridge (SF-North Bay)

                winter solstice (2017)

Beginning at sunset, the walking path was formed crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and continuing along the many paths of the North Bay side, between walking, looking back, and stillness through the night, then at sunrise, returning across the bridge to the Chrissy Field area in San Francisco.  A selection of rotating signs were worn on the back of the body with the words “Invisible”, “Falling", and "Home" at the bottom of a blank white panel.  In open-air darkness, without an expecting audience, the work served as an inquiry of witness, paths, and appearance.

Walking away, here again

a circle of a landscape

How to be a good listener

between pilgrimage and drifting

Blue mountains are walking

trash is walking, silence is walking

Walking with an economy of sky

with a city and an ocean's shadow

Topographies of absence

walking away, here again

TABLEAU STATIONS

works: