A guest post by Marie-Anne Lerjen, a walking artist from Zurich (Switzerland). Her website is in German.
We walked a good long walk (24 kms) from Girona to Banyoles in Cataluña, setting off in a considerable heat (27 degrees) and finishing after dark. Here is Marie-Anne’s Sweat Mapping blog
It’s a quick but good listen on Soundcloud:
Featuring myself and many other walking artists from around the world who had congregated at the Art del Caminar conference.
November 2023
I am happy to say that I am on my way to Camallera near Girona in Cataluña / Catalonia, where I am taking up an Artist’s Residency at Nau Côclea (Centre de Creació Contemporània Nau Côchlea).
I will be walking around the edge of the town, the boundary of the area, listening to the sounds of the place, and to ‘stories’ from the soil. When I make a Sound Walk, I follow the signs. I take notice of what happens around me when I am in the research and preparation stage.
I had been reading about the current interest in engaging with the legacy of Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime, and consequent human suffering. The suppression of democratic freedom and the Catalan language had far-reaching results. I have studied The Historical Memory Law, followed the opening of some Civil War mass graves, spoken with people about inherited grief, and noted the rituals being enacted around the acknowledgement of the loss on many levels.
When I discovered that my visit corresponds with the annual walk across the Pyrénées from France in memory of Walter Benjamin, I knew I must join it. Benjamin was directed across the mountains by Lisa Fittko and received bad news on arrival in Port Bou on the Spanish side. He died by suicide that night, before being able to finally escape to the United States.
This level of inter-generational trauma takes time, so much time, to leave the gene pool. It surges through bloodlines … How to tell a new story of resilience and hope? Is this history of loss held in the soil?… How can we honour the suffering of our ancestors – of those who came before us – but still try to unravel the chains we find ourselves bound by? Is the answer held within the very soil… Is the answer held in the residue the ghosts leave behind?
Kerri ni Dochartaigh Thin Places p186
I come to this residency with many years of embodied study of death, grief and loss – personally, and through my Shiatsu work, death cafes, and writing. This coincidence, then, came as no surprise. I know that the Sound Walk that I will be making during my residency may concern grief, loss and renewal as a result, although I won’t know until I begin.
If you are interested in this project and able to come between 20 November and 2 December, I am inviting you to join me for one day or part of one day, to walk and listen, to share your feelings. We will co-create a Sound Walk from these experiences which will then live on in Camallera for anyone to join at a later date.
Dates: 20 November and 2 December. There is one bed for you to stay a night in the artist’s cottage. Let me know if you are interested! tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com
This is part of the Separation and Unity Project (Caledonia / Catalonia). You may also be interested in other parts of it already complete: El Grand Tour Girona mini-pilgrimage, and Festivities and Delegates.
A sound walk and installation made in a tunnel for ‘Watch This Space’ #4WCoP23 September 2023 using graffiti by North Edinburgh artists and local history. Listen here.
‘Is There a Place for REVOlution? or Peace and Biscuits’ is a site-specific Sound Walk and Art Installation on the Chancelot cycle path under Ferry Road in Edinburgh. It is on Google Maps and the location using What3Words is ///fallen.reach.bottle
You can use your phone to activate the QR code and listen while you walk through the tunnel. You can also listen at home (without the full effect).
The text of this Sound Walk uses other people’s sprayed graffiti words, so it sometimes sounds like nonsense. In it, I am playing with the found text, trying to make sense of it. Sometimes I read the words (like ABDO or REVO) from left to right (as English) and sometimes from right to left (as Arabic), highlighting the effort we often have to make to understand each other, and how important it is that we do. Because this is a sort of creative prose or poetry, I also make up my own words to fit in with the letters I find.
Sound Walk topics include:
You will find hand stitched pennants looped on a red line on one side of the tunnel. The string of triangular flags are hanging from old metal hooks which were originally used for cable and wires when this cycle path (or greenway) was a railway. The images and found text are from the walls and surfaces around North Edinburgh.
“AET REY NOOD Do you recognise this language? DAERB REY TAE. Can an internet app translate it? It’s ABout DOing / Or Don’t Be And (face the consequences).” This is text from the new Sound Walk. For clues, see the images below.
I’m playing with words, making my own acronyms which are inspired by the found text. For example, ABDO (reading from left to right and back again from right to left etc) becomes: “And Between Doing Or Don’t Be. Anyway, By Doing Otherwise, Deciding to Be And Bide, Doesn’t Our Doing Become……A Beautiful Door Opening. Or Don’t Butterflies Ascend?” Am I speaking in riddles? I hope I haven’t lost you.
| Unless you people see signs and wonders you will never believe |
| 80% of ocean life is dead |
| Many |
| Deaths |
| Lives Matter |
| Unfuck the system |
| Fight |
| REVOlution, Revolt, Revoke |
In this soundwalk, there’s some local history, activism and suggestions for when you are in a dark tunnel and cannot see the light at the end, the way out. There’s a film here on Vimeo that gives you a (silent) idea of the walk.
“I often use Street Wisdom if I need to get an insight on a situation or a problem. Once I’m tuned up, I’II hold the issue and just walk with that in mind and body, and see what happens. (It’s basically a shorthand way of doing the Quest: “Streets, show me some options with all this!”) Something often, if not I j. The other day I was full of different stresses, and the streets shared with me all kinds of patterns that seemed interconnected. I interpreted that insight as “Everything’s connected” (it’s nice to reduce the insight to 2 or 3 words). And that really helped!
Philip Cowell from Street Wisdom
With MANY thanks to Alba Bersolí (film maker ‘El día que volaron la montaña’ (When the Mountain Rumbles shown at the Catalan Film Festival in Edinburgh 2023 on Instagram @albabresolí ) for lending me her laptop and teaching me some Premiere Pro, going above and beyond to support me, and being an all-round wonderful woman.
‘Your Wish is my Command’ is a graphic novel by Deena Mohamed reviewed here in the Guardian newspaper. There is a charcter called Abdo in it. ABDO is a word graffitied on the wall of the Ferry Road tunnel on the Chancelot Path where my Sound Walk is located.
January 2023
A walk from the Tuileries Gardens (Louvre art gallery end) to the Pont Neuf, along the Seine, and back through the Tuileries Tunnel with art works. I aimed to walk through the tunnel in the other (west-east) direction, but couldn’t find the entrance. Google maps to the rescue! Note that it says ‘Closed’ though at the time of writing that means only to cars and lorries etc.
Look to your left for make-shift homes and art work. Signs indicating historical sites of interest and local history are on the walls too, including the story of the Washerwomen. During the18th century, more than 80 boats would have been moored along the banks of the Seine, each carrying 24 washerwomen (‘a gigantic laundry’). Others built a jetty, illegally, and stationed themselves there to hang out the washing to dry. Eventually the boats were condemned as a hindrance to river traffic, and ‘the smalls’ unseemly to be seen from the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace.
Details:
Text from the @m_a_d_a_m_e (below) ‘De l’obscur au clair ce n’est pas l’œil oui change mais la façon dont on Louvre’ meaning, approximately, ‘from dark to light, it’s not the eye that changes but the way we Louvre.’
The Tuileries Tunnel is a cross between a cold contemporary art gallery and a graffitied tunnel. With all the ambience of the Channel one (linking Dover and Calais), once you are in it you are only reminded of its Parisian location by occasional French texts. Overlaid now with random graffiti, it’s hard to distinguish between the original and later-added work.
Lighting changes colour like switching traffic beacons and affects the frescoes. Beam-me-up blue ones invite you to stand underneath, back to the sides – part interrogatory, part revelatory. Some works stretch along the walls, like the dancing figures or running wild animals, moving and flowing; others decorate with familiar blocks of primary coloured letters or the image of Frida Kahlo. All are constantly interacting with their audience, some concentrating only on running and others defacing them.
There isn’t one theme, though the fight for life and peace features strongly. The art works do not, collectively, tell a story, nor do they offer a message (unlike the Colinton Tunnel or No Birds Land in Edinburgh), though there is immense subtlety in some of them despite the conditions of the walls and the external temperature.
Half way through, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay, but I had to either go back or on. There is a rawness in the air, a sense of disquiet, with none of the cosyness of a National Gallery or safety of a contemporary white box. Certainly there is impermanence – there are no guarantees that what you are witnessing will be there tomorrow.
Link to tourist website page about the Tuileries Tunnel
Nearest public toilets: Tuileries Gardens, Rue de Rivoli / Place des Pyramides entrance.
For a good takeaway try Aki Boulangerie, 16 Rue de Sainte-Anne, 75001 Paris (Japanese take-away meals: those works-of-art-cum-French-pâtisserie (cakes is too pedestrian a description), real delicacies. I had a briquette (I think it was called) sort of deep fried breadcrumbs outside with curried veg inside – delicious).
For the best, simple green tea served in the tiddliest teapot (there’s plenty – quality not quantity) in Paris (so far) try Atelier WM – 45 Rue de Richelieu, 75001 Paris, France
Have you been to the tunnel? What did you think? Please do leave a comment below.
Part of the Separation and Unity Project, Cataluña, July 2022
This wall hanging, ‘Festivities and Delegates’ represents an act of unity, the bringing together of many of those who attended the Walking Art and Relational Geographies International Encounters conference in Cataluna in July 2022. Planned for several years, but thwarted by the pandemic, delegates were at last able to travel from Australia, South Africa, Brazil, America and Europe to the conference in Girona, Olot, and Vic to share walking art and community projects via presentations and walkshops over a period of a week.
This work was inspired by the 18th /19th century ‘Saints and Festivities for the months of April to November’ in the Museu Montserrat. I climbed up there after attending the conference. The ornate Russian ‘menologion’ is a calendar featuring rows of saints, above which are their names and the dates of the days on which they are honoured, in cyrillic script.
A menologion (menologium, menology, menologue, menologia) was sometimes a liturgical ‘office’, an ecclesiastical, Eastern Orthodox service book or martyrology; a long list of saints and the details of their lives arranged according to the months of the year.
It is not dissimilar to the secular mural at the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh depicting key figures and events in the history of Scotland. The Separation and Unity Project is interested in the movements towards and away from independence by Scottish and Catalonian peoples, at what urges us to separate from, or join with each other.
I am also referencing Buddhist and Hindu mandalas, and other celebratory depictions used to inspire their followers and remind them of the true path. Mandalas come in many shapes and sizes, often using geometric arrangements. They can represent the whole universe, and be used as a way to separate from everyday existence and focus on what is important for greater knowledge. The Vajrabhairava mandala, for example, is a silk tapestry woven with gilded paper depicting lavish elements like crowns and jewelry.
The human mind is like “A microcosm representing various divine powers at work in the universe”
John Ankerberg and John Weldon (343:1996) via Wikipedia (see below)
I took digital photos and video stills from my phone documentation of the conference and the social time we spent together, and manipulated the images using free Layout software. In some cases I used social media images. Instead of the elaborate calligraphy that you can see on the Russian ‘Festivities…, I wrote free-hand with my finger or with a biro.
Details: 160cm long and 70cm wide, mixed media – sewed from scraps of upholstery fabric which came from free sample books. Ribbons, tapes and sundry, shiny objects such as bells, earings which have lost their pairs, and sequins. Iron-on paper was used to transfer the photographs onto the fabric.
It incorporates a number of small brass and other metal bells, with reflective totems. These were/are often used to ward off evil spirits, to bring ones attention into the moment, to reflect the devil’s face back to him, and, contrastingly, even to represent the sound of the Buddha’s ‘voice’ spouting wisdom. The protective aspect would also traditionally have been as much from the ‘monkey mind’ and other natural inner temptations, as from what might be attacking us from the outside. Tantric mandalas would have been an aspect of separation and protection from the outer Samsaric world.
Quote: from their ‘Encylopedia of New Age Beliefs: The New Age Movement’, (p. 343, ISBN 9781565071605 archived from the original on 2016-06-03, retrieved 2015-11-15)
Walking without a donkey 