Radical walking
I need to check on this further, but I have a hunch that radical walking what Smith calls the derive. It is radical simply because it is purposeful as compared to the thoughtless walk.
According to Phil Smith, radical walking emerged from anti-capitalist post-war European activists who rejected Stalinism in favor of “a Marcusean liberation of subjectivity, eros, desire, and exploration of irrational zones of consciousness, beyond the reach of mass media.” Despite its strong sense of subjectivity, that movement deeply believed in the power of collectivities.
The original pattern of radical walking
Phil Smith articulated a pattern of the walking arts in his 2008 paper “The Contemporary Dérive.” This pattern was a “resistance against romanticist walking” that he noticed in psychogeography, fluxus, occultism, and land and performance artists.
Absence of pattern in the walking arts
After 2008, Smith found it difficult to detect a pattern. He blames the lack of innovation within radical walking itself, which manifested into a lack of theories and practices. This is why as the original focus of radical walking disintegrated, groups that became interested in the walking arts created their own theories and practices based on their own initiatives. In addition, documentation and communication among these groups happened gradually. What developed was a highly open and diverse walking arts. For example, the biggest organization that binds the walking arts (the Walking Artists Network) have become a platform for unfiltered information.
There is a lack of collectivism in walking arts
Smith claims that perhaps there is no radical walking “movement.” Smith blames the lack of a pattern from 2008 onwards from the incoherence of radical walkers and the lack of collectivism. Despite the existence of political and communal walking initiatives, these are not moving towards a strong network characterized by regular communications.
Lack of collectivism in the walking arts led to the dominance of autonomy, subjectivity, and individualism
Smith argues that since 2008, the diverse radical walking space never really formed a strong collective or formed one but rapidly disintegrated. In the vacuum it left, autonomy, subjectivity, and individualism dominated.
Expansion and diversification
In 2008, women were evidently marginalized in the walking arts. But this improved six years later as the walking arts expanded and diversified as illustrated by Smith’s book On Walking (2014).
The walking arts expanded because of the loose convergence of artists using the derive as a tool to “disrupt capitalist alienation” and land and live performance artists. However, waking also attracted other people with other priorities, such as meditation, tourism, nature walking, entrepreneurship, etc.
- This is the reason why it is important early on to articulate specifically what I want to use walking for.
Negative developments
However, according to Smith, the walking arts faced several difficulties:
- accelerating hollowing out of public spaces
- war on subjectivity
- uncovering of spaces of violent privilege
Even radical walking developed its own problems:
- commercialization
- return to romanticism
- mis-identification of modest localist events as subversive
- ”new nature writing” that stereotyped radical walking as something done only in rural settings (bucolic)
Response to rapid diversification
Smith advocated the “situational dérive” to re-unite psychogeography and the disruption of what he calls “the Spectacle” (which I think is capitalist alienation if not capitalism itself). Smith also advocated for ludibria, which involves using memory to re-imagine architectures and landscapes to change their meanings without rebuilding them. However, neither of his solutions worked because they were abstract and esoteric.
What seemed to have united the walking arts based on the Plymouth conference in 2019 were concrete materiality:
- “the importance of embodiment” and
- ”giving attention to unhuman partners.”
Theorizations of radical walking
Among the theorizations of radical walking available are:
- Blake Morris’s ‘Walking Networks’
- Sonia Overall’s work
- Helen Billinghurst doctoral thesis
- Morag Rose’s doctoral thesis
However, the most influential of these theorizations come from the “new nature” writers like Fredric Gros (A Philosophy of Walking) and Robert Macfarlane (The Old Ways) that advocate romanticism.
In Smith’s survey of the website of the Walking Artists Network, theory and practice was not talked about that much. What was popular were:
- events
- products
- online talks
- audio walks
- mapping
- walking for well-being and resilience
But in the WalkCreate galleries, he did found discussions on:
- a reclamation of subjectivity
- common fragility and porosity of walkers in relation to their landscapes and unhuman others (mostly urban rather than rural)
- no romanticism and psychogeography
Lack of innovation in radical walking
Smith notes a lack of innovation in radical walking as he reviewed his research from his book Walking’s New Movement (2016). Most of the projects he found before 2008 simply repeated Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Derive” (1958).
Counter the return to individualistic romanticism by embracing subjectivism
In Smith’s book Walking’s New Movement (2016), he argued that contemporary romantic theorists advocate a “lukewarm” relationship with the unhuman that is insufficient to motivate “the mainstream Spectacle of the bucolic.” This could signal an opportunity to counter the return to individualistic romanticism. If radical walkers embrace and advocate a “warmer” relationship with the unhuman, which involves a “romantic fusion,” they could be more appealing to nature-loving walkers. Smith, therefore, asks, “is the most powerful path to emerge from our walking movement a subjective one?”
In a time when neoliberalism is erasing individualism, Smith offers to let go of the dream to create a radical walking movement and instead “work through the medium of an idolised and yet threatened individualism.”
Smith proposes:
Maybe, the terrains we need to explore next are not just the edgelands of the cities, but also the irrational edgelands of experiences, visions and desires.
Smith asks:
where do the webs of irrationality and threads of fantasy attach to unhuman matters – in subjective or mass forms – and can I attach myself too?
If the material forces and social relations of solely human kinds no longer provide the grounds for collective structures, maybe wild imagination and unhuman mysteries can?
The subjectivism of contemporary radical walking will be embodied
While the trend in radical walking is currently subjectivist, this subjectivism is embodied. The body and the unhuman others where this body is situated provide an opportunity for contemporary radical walking to turn outwards.
This turning outwards happens through direct physical encounters, direct attending to them, and paying attention to our subjective experiences of mystery tales of these unhuman others (see Sam George’s analysis of Old Stinker). We should explore how these stories become the organizing principle of a place.
Smith proposes a shift of focus from the psychogeographical affects of place on human subjects to the unhuman players in wounded spaces.
To do this exploration, we need to get out, walk, and find out.
Must Check
- The Contemporary Dérive (2008)
- Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Derive” (1958)
- Walking’s New Movements conference, Plymouth, November 2019
- TRIP Conference, Manchester, 2008
Someday/Maybe
- Morag Rose and the Loiterers Resistance Movement
- Clare Qualman and the Walking Artists Network
- Dee Heddon and Misha Myers’s Walking Library
- Testament’s ‘Black Men Walking’
- Fife Psychogeography Collective
- Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography
- Blake Morris and his championing networks and memory theatres
- Monique Besten’s solo walking
References
Smith, P. (2021). That Which Walks. https://www.triarchypress.net/uploads/1/4/0/0/14002490/that_which_walks.pdf