With Robert Curgenven in Cornwall, and Will Montgomery and Emmanuelle Waeckerlè in Kensington Gardens, London. We had all read Tim Ingold’s article ‘Footprints through the weather-world: walking, breathing, knowing’.
We undertook local fieldwork in two locations on the same week-end (08-10/09/2023). Both were sites for Robert Curgenven Open Form Pavilion of Air project, which uses the Echoes geolocation audio app to fill demarcated locations with a pattern of tones. Movement within the chosen area triggers different sounds within the user’s headphones. Emmanuelle, Will and his son Kip walked in Kensington Gardens near the Serpentine Gallery and Robert walked in a location in Cornwall. We set a deadline for the completion of traces a few weeks after that. Our prompts, chosen for optional orientation in our walks, were the following:
Park fenced with what it is winning, to keep local signals thinly home rather than universal directions out’. (Peter Larkin, Imparkments (the Surrogate has Settled) To accept the ground./ To go to it as a question./ To open up the day inside the day,/ a bubble holding air/ bending the vista to it’. (Peter Gizzi, ‘Stung’, Sky Burial)
A few days later we gathered online to share and discuss traces and stories of our respective local ‘walking in air’ fieldwork.
Some traces of our fieldwork are available here. More on Robert Curgenven’s Open Form Pavilion of Air series here
