In the chapter entitled "The Shape of a Walk" from her book Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit informs us of how walking, a seemingly utilitarian or leisurely task, has been a "act of resistance to the mainstream." Walking can be art.
Marina Abramović, self-described as "the grandmother of performance art," certainly reminds us that walking can be a radical art. Abramović and her former partner, Ulay, were interesting in using their bodies to test "both their own and their audience's physical and psychic boundaries with performances that threatened danger, pain, transgression, boredom" (Solnit, 273). Abramović and Ulay used walking as a medium that, without words or description, communicated messages about relationships, space, decisions, intimacy.
I think the beauty of performance art is that the work is grounded in ideology, and there is little if no exposition in the work itself. Performance art is concentrated on the gesture of the work, which lends itself to an air of purity. Of course, this does not mean that other media are less pure or heavily expository, but I think performance art is unique in the lack of the necessity to explain to the audience what is being done. The audience is left to interpret and react to the work in their own way.
Abramović and Ulay explored the physicality of walking and its implications in many works, including Relation to Space, Imponderabilia, and Rest Energy. However, the most dramatic and radical of their work devoted to walking was The Great Wall Walk, in which the artists planned to walk towards each other from opposite ends of the wall, meet and then marry. There were a series of bureaucratic headaches that accompanied the planning of this trip. This, combined with the significant amount of time that it took to organize the performance, and the introspective nature of the walk, led to a different outcome than the artists had envisioned. In 1988, the couple "spent three months walking towards each other from 2,400 miles away, embraced at the center, and went their separate ways" (274). This walk was the end of their romantic and creative relationship.
It's interesting that this epic walk led to Abramović and Ulay's relationship. Walking is a way of connecting to the earth and the world. Walking carries with it, "the primeval purity of bodily encounter with the earth" (275). I wonder if it was this intimacy that the artists developed with the earth during the thousands of miles they walked on the Great Wall that ultimately drew the couple apart. Perhaps the pull they felt with the earth, enhanced by the gestural study of walking, that changed how the individuals related to the rest of the world. Deliberate walking is a harbinger of truth. It forces one to reflect and be honest with the way in which one understand herself in relation to the earth and to others.
Marina Abramović, self-described as "the grandmother of performance art," certainly reminds us that walking can be a radical art. Abramović and her former partner, Ulay, were interesting in using their bodies to test "both their own and their audience's physical and psychic boundaries with performances that threatened danger, pain, transgression, boredom" (Solnit, 273). Abramović and Ulay used walking as a medium that, without words or description, communicated messages about relationships, space, decisions, intimacy.
I think the beauty of performance art is that the work is grounded in ideology, and there is little if no exposition in the work itself. Performance art is concentrated on the gesture of the work, which lends itself to an air of purity. Of course, this does not mean that other media are less pure or heavily expository, but I think performance art is unique in the lack of the necessity to explain to the audience what is being done. The audience is left to interpret and react to the work in their own way.
