Thierry Davila examines movement and mobility in contemporary art as tools for making art, focusing on the figure of the walker or surveyor.

The book starts from the idea that part of contemporary art gives movement a central role in the creation of artworks. While this continues a long art-historical tradition in which the walking figure is important, Davila argues that contemporary artists treat this theme in a distinctive way that deserves focused analysis. Rather than offering a broad survey of nomadism in art, the book concentrates on selected contemporary practices, especially those of Gabriel Orozco, Francis Alÿs, and the Stalker collective, to identify the rules and mechanisms behind this approach.

Davila shows that movement here is not just a matter of physical travel through space. It also becomes a psychological act, a tool for fiction, and even another name for artistic production itself. Centered largely on the city as a site of action, these forms of movement reveal a world in which reality is understood as process.