To Follow...a Path

To Follow (or not to follow) a Path

One of the workshops I teach is ’Way-finding and the Art of Psycho-geography’, I encourage participants to go out and find their own path: their own route to venture through the locality. This creates an opportunity for them to encounter the town in their own personal way. This may lead to discovering Whitstable for the first time or rediscovering it again on this course. I have developed a practice during my MA which can be taught and is based on a ‘derive’.

Taking a derive.

To take a ‘derive’ was one of the basic practices of the Situationists Movement..

‘The Situationists also believed that artistic intervention in the everyday environment could awaken people to their surroundings and lead to a transformation of society.’ Amy Dempsey, Styles, Schools and movements.

When exercising our imaginations we start to be curious and observe more.

I find it interesting when I ask people to go out for a short, 5 minutes or so, derive, they become concerned about why, where and how and whether wallets/bags should be taken. We so often take ourselves out on a walk to do something or perform a task such as to walk the dog, push the pram, get shopping etc that to ‘just walk’ becomes seen as a tricky instruction.

Saxon Shore Way walk, following the seawall at Seasalter.

Following existing paths, (such as our local ‘Saxon Shore Way’, a long distance path around the Kent coast) allow ‘the walk’ to become the destination in itself. It is a place to visit and explore, walking these long distance paths is acknowledged as a ‘verified’ leisure activity. To just walk, with no destination in mind can feel both anarchic and liberating yet could also be seen as an indulgent and wasteful pursuit of time.

Curiousity

I love to follow existing paths randomly and see where they go, Whitstable is a great town for exploring in this way as it is full of little quiet back lanes and old alleyways. One of these is often photographed by tourists as its name is ‘Squeezegut Alley’. As you may have guessed it is very narrow at one end and apparently used in times past by naughty children running away from a particular local ‘bobby’ who couldn’t chase them all the way through, as he didn’t fit!

A well used path to the sea at Seasalter.

A new book has just been published that I am looking forward to reading, it is called ‘Playing for Time- making art as if the world mattered.’ It was written by Lucy Neal and created in collaboration with other artists including Anne-Marie Culhane, who I met at the Eden Project back in February this year.

Rob Hopkins has highlighted this book and other similar works in his blog ‘Transition Culture’. The blog looks at the journey of the Transition movement which he initiated back in 2007, it’s well worth a look at if you are interested in a more sustainable and enjoyable approach to life.

An inviting pathway on the Welsh hills.

 Another recent blog of his published on the 27^th of April 2015 talks about Lucy’s book ‘Playing for Time’ and interviews two other authors and founders of similar work. There was a great quote about curiosity that I want to highlight.

‘Artists pick up on what’s happening in society from talking to people through an innate curiosity that we live with all the time.’ Sarah Woods

I have enjoyed developing my walking art practice and seeing how people can be encouraged to explore their locality for themselves. Curiosity awakens us up to new experiences and when tapping into this through creative imagination and expression I believe we can connect much more to our senses and therefore our surroundings.

Place

When we feel a sense of familiarity and ease with our surroundings, our local environment, we are far more likely to feel possessive of it, even protective. This was the title of my MA research paper; Place, Projection and Projection- How people connect to place.

Lichen on a footpath post in Wales.

Listening, yet again to Radio Four this morning I caught a wonderful programme with Phillip Glass the composer, explaining about creating an imaginative place with just his music. I know that music can take us back to specific times, events and places; he was talking about his music scores for films, operas and symphonies.

‘the music is the thought…a Buddist teacher, Rinpoche told me once that there is not just one universe, there are 3,000 universes, right away I asked him is one of these music? Yes he said, could I go there some day? Hopefully, he replied. When he told me that, 15 years ago I thought that he meant in some future reincarnation but perhaps he didn’t, perhaps he was thinking in this very life I would be in that world…’ Phillip Glass, Words Without Music

There would be a different soundtrack to both the coast and the hills.

I can see that if this imagination is exercised then we could discover many more layers to a place. Similar to a piece of music, perhaps a film score which has the power to transport us back to that memory of the film, plot, characters and the overall ambience of the place, we can create our own soundtrack. It may be the sound of our footsteps, the wind in the trees or any other site specific noise. When I think of areas that I know well and enjoy to walk in regularly, I can map their sounds in my mind even now as I sit writing. Perhaps walking these routes regularly has already created a sound map.

Loch Sunart, I believe this would produce an epic musical score.

I certainly have a sound map of The Street in Tankerton, this has a soundtrack of people and dogs on the prom, shingle crunching as I walk down the beach, wind whipping up as I walk out onto the Streets visible expanse, seagulls crying and in the distance other shore birds calling. As I reach the end of the Street I hear the waves as they converge, splish splashing together, the wind is always more ferocious out there and any distant noises from the shore are only intermittent, windblown and ghostly.

Next week I plan to take some video and still camera footage, over a number of days, on a few walks to create a library of images which I can use for the promotional film for my Kickstarter project. It will be very interesting to see if my imagination and reality itself can be layered together to produce a significant and unique soundtrack for the recording. I can at least try. It will be interesting to see what I discover about places that I think I know well from what appears on the soundtrack.