Anatomy of A WalkAnatomy of a Walk unfolds the experience of a walk in a beautiful river park edging an urban area. Walking is a continuous narrative of space and time and of human and non-human experience.
The viewer is asked to open to experience through their corporeal and visceral senses. Moving from the natural world above ground to that below us, Anatomy encourages a re-enchantment with the visible alongside the invisible reminding us what exists unknown to and unseen by us. This work aims to re-enchant the viewer with the natural world and through this process, awaken meaning within ourselves, opening up to the possibilities in ourselves and our world. Connecting viewers more fully in this way may also coax them away from their keyboards (AFK) in (to) real life (IRL). |
Early Sunset Sky Over East Rock, 2020, Digitial Photo
|
Take A Walk: Path 1Click on the image and use the arrows to take a walk.
|
Take A Walk: Path 2Click on the image and use the arrows to take a walk.
|
|
Poem: Anatomy of A WalkFree download curtesy of the artist, Maria Markham
| ||
ProcessVirtue, truth and beauty are in us all. We do not have to change.
Just be awakened. Kamin Lertchaiprasert 1 The beautiful thing about beauty is that it works in multiples. Rachel Armstrong 2 Walking During Covid in many communities, walking released us from enclosed spaces and provided other reliefs. I have always walked. Now, walking is indispensable allowing me to connect my inner and outer worlds and to appreciate natural beauty and sense a communing across time and species. I find presence and peace in the natural environments I walk in and my pace synchronizes my senses, body, and mind. Everyday things that fill my world make themselves known in new ways as I stroll. In the interconnected ecologies around me, I am also reminded that we all have our place in a complex whole. The walks in Anatomy take place in an urban area that leads into a beautiful river park that I traverse regularly. This landscape has shown me many wonders—osprey eating a freshly caught fish, turtles laying their eggs in spring, and the marvel of shoots creeping out of the ground after a cold, seemingly never-ending New England winter. |
|
|
Throughout the seasons and across the years, I have taken many photos and the visual part of this work started with culling these images. These walks are an unfolding narrative in my life and Anatomy of a Walk, rooted in the walking experience, aims to reflect the beauty and wonder of place along with reverence for embodied experience, our environment, and what is seen and unseen.
|
|
Anatomy draws on many artist’s work relating to walking including Janet Cardiff, Francis Alÿs, Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, and Yuji Agematsu. Francis Alÿs notes that “walking, in-particular drifting, or strolling, is already—with the speed culture of our time—a kind of resistance...a very immediate method for unfolding "3 This work unfolds many stories and resists the schism between humans and nature that has its roots in the Enlightment, a gap that science and the fast pace of modern life has only widened. Marked lightly by humans and filled with the non-human species and inanimate forms that inhabit the world alongside us, this work asks the viewer to use their senses to open to experience. Moving from the natural world above ground to that below us, the work encourages a re-enchantment with the visible alongside the invisible. Through our corporeal and visceral senses, we can attend to what is around us, underneath our feet, close to our skin, above and below. We are reminded of what exists unknown to and unseen by us. The continuity of the narrative emphasizes our story, the non-human stories, and the histories all around us. As the viewer perambles, they sense the circularity of time as place and time are fictionalized and past, present, and the future collapse into each other. Stories reaching from the past into the present, along with those yet to happen weave creating a continuous circle in time. As Janet Cardiff’s walk narrations show “‘Now’ and ‘here’ dissipates and coalesces with multiple periods of time and places.”4 The connection of life above and below ground combines with this circularity to expand our field of possibilities.
|
|
work that talks to the themes of beauty, embodied experience, environment, and the visible and invisible. Toggling between these different media informed my process as I strove for a simple and transparent final work.
|
Anatomy holds the experience of a walk through visual, written, and aural narration. Two catalogues of photos allow the viewer to peruse, at their own pace, the natural beauty of the walking world, whilst the video leads us through a simulated walk with a narrative touching on several themes. As they experience visual and aural components, the viewer can engage their own imagination and body to connect to the simple beauty surrounding them daily. This work aims to reconnect viewers more fully to their lived worlds and in this way coax them away from their keyboards (AFK) in (to) real life (IRL). The modern world, with its planned obsolescence and constant drive for the new that overwrites recent knowledge and ancient ways of knowing, is quickly destroying the diversity of life on earth. Anatomy of a Walk asks the viewer to take a walk and consider things anew. During these extraordinary and hard times, this work hopes to reenchant the viewer with the natural world and through this process, awaken meaning for ourselves, opening up to the possibility for beauty and joy within us and in our world. |
|
Footnotes 1 Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Echo Chamber Documentary (Sharjah Biennial, 2019) 2 Rachel Armstrong, Rolf Hughes, Espen Gangvik (Editors), Handbook of the Unknowable. (TEKS, 2016) 3 Russell Ferguson, Jean Fisher, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Francis Alÿs (Phaidon, 2008, 31) 4 Daniela Zyman, 'At the Edge of the Event Horizon' in Marjam Schaub, Janet Cardiff. The Walk Book. (Walther König, 2005, 13) |
|
References
Rachel Armstrong, Rolf Hughes, Espen Gangvik (Editors), Handbook of the Unknowable.
TEKS, 2016
Rachel Armstrong, Rolf Hughes, Caustic Ophelia. Brick Dialogues Ex:LAB 2019)
Janet Cardiff, The Walk Book. Issu
Crab & Bee: Phil Smith, Helen Billinghurst 10 Scores for a Wild City. UNFIX Festival, 2021
Russell Ferguson, Jean Fisher, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Francis Alÿs. London & New York: Phaidon, 2008
Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1978) Kamin Lertchaiprasert , Echo Chamber Documentary. (Sharjah Biennial, 2019) Carrie Marie Schneider, The Ten List: Walk as Art. (Glasstire, November 23, 2012) Will Self, A Posthumous Shock. (Harpers 2022)
Daniela Zyman, 'At the Edge of the Event Horizon', in Schaub, Janet Cardiff. The Walk Book
Artists With Works Relating to Walks That Influenced Anatomy
Marina Abramović and Ulay Yuji Agematsu
Francis Alÿs
Janet Cardiff
Crab & Bee: Phil Smith, Helen Billinghurst Hamish Fulton
Richard Long
The Situationists
Rachel Armstrong, Rolf Hughes, Espen Gangvik (Editors), Handbook of the Unknowable.
TEKS, 2016
Rachel Armstrong, Rolf Hughes, Caustic Ophelia. Brick Dialogues Ex:LAB 2019)
Janet Cardiff, The Walk Book. Issu
Crab & Bee: Phil Smith, Helen Billinghurst 10 Scores for a Wild City. UNFIX Festival, 2021
Russell Ferguson, Jean Fisher, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Francis Alÿs. London & New York: Phaidon, 2008
Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1978) Kamin Lertchaiprasert , Echo Chamber Documentary. (Sharjah Biennial, 2019) Carrie Marie Schneider, The Ten List: Walk as Art. (Glasstire, November 23, 2012) Will Self, A Posthumous Shock. (Harpers 2022)
Daniela Zyman, 'At the Edge of the Event Horizon', in Schaub, Janet Cardiff. The Walk Book
Artists With Works Relating to Walks That Influenced Anatomy
Marina Abramović and Ulay Yuji Agematsu
Francis Alÿs
Janet Cardiff
Crab & Bee: Phil Smith, Helen Billinghurst Hamish Fulton
Richard Long
The Situationists
Maria Markham's Artist Statement
Drawing upon personal and collective experience, Maria Markham investigates cultural, political, and aesthetic composites to open discourse in ways that she hopes will be transformative. Her work tackles contemporary questions including immigration and regeneration, bringing individual and collective realities and innermost thoughts and emotions into form to manifest new perspectives and diverse ways of thinking and being. Given the intransigent nature of many contemporary issues, Markham works to, as Donna Haraway says, “...figure out how, with each other, we can open up possibilities for what can still be.”
Markham brings a cross-disciplinary set of interests to art practice. Exploring themes such as socio-politics, body and psyche, and science and systems. As a transnational, she also interrogates emigration and immigration. Along with experiments in installation and video montage, she uses paint and other media to engage with contemporary issues through the emotions and sensibility of the body.
Maria Markham's Project/Process Statement
Anatomy of a Walk unfolds the experience of a walk in a beautiful river park. Walking is a continuous narrative of space and time and of human and non-human experience. The viewer is asked to open to the experience of this work through their corporeal and visceral senses. Moving from the natural world above ground to that below us, Anatomy encourages a re-enchantment with the visible alongside the invisible reminding us about what exists unknown to and unseen by us.
Drawing upon personal and collective experience, Maria Markham investigates cultural, political, and aesthetic composites to open discourse in ways that she hopes will be transformative. Her work tackles contemporary questions including immigration and regeneration, bringing individual and collective realities and innermost thoughts and emotions into form to manifest new perspectives and diverse ways of thinking and being. Given the intransigent nature of many contemporary issues, Markham works to, as Donna Haraway says, “...figure out how, with each other, we can open up possibilities for what can still be.”
Markham brings a cross-disciplinary set of interests to art practice. Exploring themes such as socio-politics, body and psyche, and science and systems. As a transnational, she also interrogates emigration and immigration. Along with experiments in installation and video montage, she uses paint and other media to engage with contemporary issues through the emotions and sensibility of the body.
Maria Markham's Project/Process Statement
Anatomy of a Walk unfolds the experience of a walk in a beautiful river park. Walking is a continuous narrative of space and time and of human and non-human experience. The viewer is asked to open to the experience of this work through their corporeal and visceral senses. Moving from the natural world above ground to that below us, Anatomy encourages a re-enchantment with the visible alongside the invisible reminding us about what exists unknown to and unseen by us.
|