I was pleased to recently discover that a publication I designed back in 2008 found its way online in a distributable free digital format. The following excerpt is from where it was hosted, at commonplacesproject.org:
Rising and Falling: How We Walk is a publication that resulted from our 8 month effort to work with walking, in a city that renders disposable bodies not confined to vehicles. This small book is our way of reflecting on our work, but it is also meant as a teaching and learning tool for young people in Tampa who may form their own walking communities.
Contributors: Laura Bergeron, Rozalinda Borcila, Martin Bosman, Robert Brinkman, Desiree D’Alessandro, Sarah Hendricks, Sarah Lewison, Lou Marcus, Alan Moore, Raul Romero, Victoria Skelly
The book contains 5 durational walking projects and 6 walk/talks, folded in a handmade box. The book layout puts the walking conversations in relation with the durational walks; it includes images and descriptions of the walks and documents their translation in a number of different public exhibition situations.
We Are Here – an Introduction
by Rozalinda Borcila
Take [I 275 or I 75] to the [Fowler or Fletcher] exit. Go [East or West] until you reach Bruce B Downs Highway, turn [North or South] to Pine Drive, follow Alumni Drive, pay and park. Along the way you may see one or two people standing on the side of the on/off ramps – what the locals predictably refer to as “the crazies”. If the Shriner’s Hospital is fundraising, you may spot men in funny hats standing at one of two major intersections. During shift changes at the Mall Food Court, the occasional uniformed worker may dash across Fowler Ave from South to North. Or maybe you will see an orange-vested highway worker on foot. You drive on highways and 8-lane roads and 5 lane-roads, to smaller streets not equipped with sidewalk or shoulder. And you arrive here, where we invite you to our ongoing conversation about walking: about who walks in our city and who doesn’t, and whether walking is even possible in such a place. We want to ask about walking as a signifying practice, as a form of self-experimentation and self-knowing, as research, as trespass, as a marker or pointer… We want to ask about how power is encoded in the built environment, and about practices of daily life which can, as Henri Lefebvre has suggested, “make the edifice totter”: about walking as an attempt to break down and repurpose the city, to vacate its spaces of their current function and put them to different use.
This small publication emerges out of these ongoing discussions. It centers around a selection of 5 durational walking experiments in Tampa, and a number of contributions from scholars and researchers. But first we must situate ourselves in relation to a certain history and institutional structure.
All of the projects and all but one of the contributors are affiliated with, and financially supported by, the University of South Florida. This publication is partially funded by the School of Art and Art History, which has a long tradition of experimental pedagogy and social art practice. The art projects began their lives as part of a Performance course I taught in Fall 2007; given the highly experimental nature of the Sculpture/Ceramics program, our students frequently develop performative projects which investigate, and intervene within, the space of the city. After several months of work in locations throughout Tampa, the art projects were formalized in a number of exhibition settings: the Oliver Gallery on campus, the University’s Contemporary Art Museum, the Tampa Art Museum and Going Green, a city-wide fair on sustainability and ecology also organized through the University. The students/artists included in this publication are continuing their collaboration, seeking ways to work beyond the structure of the course which brought us together. Initially, this departure seemed simple: beyond the temporal limitation of the semester, the power relations and physical location of the classroom. However, sustaining such practice has implied not merely an exit from the advantages and limitations of the current institutional structure, but also the necessity to build something else: other structures, other functions, other spaces, other forms of cooperation and conflict. This publication comes at a crucial moment in this ongoing process, a moment of great indeterminacy and potential – which it can merely point to and not, as of yet, reflect upon.
This project is also supported by the Center for Getting Ugly – a sort of counter-institution which has been operating in various ways in the last 4 years or so, a self-organized open infrastructure intended to facilitate cooperative practices. The Center itself is a function of the desire to experiment with collective dissent and conflict as proper artistic and political work. Even though none of the current projects are formally affiliated with it, we include here an excerpted transcript from Sarah Lewison’s oral introduction to a workshop organized by the Center for Getting Ugly at Versionfest Chicago, which eloquently outlines some of the most important aspects of our own ongoing discussions about walking and not walking, and their institutionalization.
The publication includes a number of folded “maps” – outlining four durational walking projects, as well as a collaborative intervention which is deployed in a number of different contexts. It also includes contributions from a number of scholars and researchers whose work I found immensely provocative, and who in various ways address the complex relationships between space and power that seem to be at the heart of the matter. Instead of essays or interviews, these contributions were solicited as walks/talks in different locations and under different circumstances (including a sleep walk/talk recorded by artist Desiree D’Alessandro). These wandering conversations are documented in extensive excerpted transcripts. My sincere gratitude to all the contributors for their inspiring work, their honesty and candor.
This small publication emerges out of these ongoing discussions. It centers around a selection of 5 durational walking experiments in Tampa, and a number of contributions from scholars and researchers. But first we must situate ourselves in relation to a certain history and institutional structure.
All of the projects and all but one of the contributors are affiliated with, and financially supported by, the University of South Florida. This publication is partially funded by the School of Art and Art History, which has a long tradition of experimental pedagogy and social art practice. The art projects began their lives as part of a Performance course I taught in Fall 2007; given the highly experimental nature of the Sculpture/Ceramics program, our students frequently develop performative projects which investigate, and intervene within, the space of the city. After several months of work in locations throughout Tampa, the art projects were formalized in a number of exhibition settings: the Oliver Gallery on campus, the University’s Contemporary Art Museum, the Tampa Art Museum and Going Green, a city-wide fair on sustainability and ecology also organized through the University. The students/artists included in this publication are continuing their collaboration, seeking ways to work beyond the structure of the course which brought us together. Initially, this departure seemed simple: beyond the temporal limitation of the semester, the power relations and physical location of the classroom. However, sustaining such practice has implied not merely an exit from the advantages and limitations of the current institutional structure, but also the necessity to build something else: other structures, other functions, other spaces, other forms of cooperation and conflict. This publication comes at a crucial moment in this ongoing process, a moment of great indeterminacy and potential – which it can merely point to and not, as of yet, reflect upon.
This project is also supported by the Center for Getting Ugly – a sort of counter-institution which has been operating in various ways in the last 4 years or so, a self-organized open infrastructure intended to facilitate cooperative practices. The Center itself is a function of the desire to experiment with collective dissent and conflict as proper artistic and political work. Even though none of the current projects are formally affiliated with it, we include here an excerpted transcript from Sarah Lewison’s oral introduction to a workshop organized by the Center for Getting Ugly at Versionfest Chicago, which eloquently outlines some of the most important aspects of our own ongoing discussions about walking and not walking, and their institutionalization.
The publication includes a number of folded “maps” – outlining four durational walking projects, as well as a collaborative intervention which is deployed in a number of different contexts. It also includes contributions from a number of scholars and researchers whose work I found immensely provocative, and who in various ways address the complex relationships between space and power that seem to be at the heart of the matter. Instead of essays or interviews, these contributions were solicited as walks/talks in different locations and under different circumstances (including a sleep walk/talk recorded by artist Desiree D’Alessandro). These wandering conversations are documented in extensive excerpted transcripts. My sincere gratitude to all the contributors for their inspiring work, their honesty and candor.
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