The webpage "Walking as Art and Cultural Practice" by Ellen Mueller explores the interdisciplinary study of walking from artistic, cultural, and geographic perspectives. It presents walking not just as a mode of locomotion but as a creative and performative act that intersects with spatiality, identity, and environment. The site compiles scholarly resources, theoretical frameworks, and case studies that link walking to concepts such as psychogeography, map-making, and embodied experience, highlighting its role in both contemporary art practices and historical cultural rituals.
Additionally, the page situates walking within broader discussions about place-making, social interaction, and urban exploration, addressing how walking can serve as a method for engaging critically with social and spatial structures. The content includes examples of artists and practitioners who use walking as a medium, emphasizing its capacity to challenge conventional boundaries of artistic production and spatial awareness. This resource is designed to support research and teaching by providing curated references and conceptual tools related to walking as an artistic and cultural phenomenon.
Most recent articles
Ojibway Story of Mudjeekawis (no date)
This story is from Ojibway Heritage by Basil Johnston, page 151: Mudjeekawis was the first born son of Epingishmook and Winonah and he accompanied his father in all his expeditions and acquired a wanderlust. He left home as soon as he was old enough. He traveled far and wide and brought back stories from other […]
Fred Forest, Hygiene of Art: The City Invaded by Blank Space (1973)
This was a performance walking by Fred Forest in the streets of São Paulo, Brazil under the military dictatorship. The artist hired 15 professional sandwich board men to walk with him carrying blank signs. “The goal of this series of provocative actions undertaken under the cover of art was to create symbolic/utopian spaces of popular […]
Megan Young “Longest Walk” (2016)
” Developed in response to the militarization of public space during the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC), this embodied installation draws inspiration from feminist histories and solidarity networks around the word. The collaborative gesture includes serial public texts printed by Angela Davis Fegan and collective actions led by female participants. Gallery installations include the resulting […]
Alexandra Huddleston, “Traces of Time, walking the Jardins de l’Abbaye de la Cambre in summer” (2022)
“Title: Traces of Time, walking the Jardins de l’Abbaye de la Cambre in summer Author: photography and text by Alexandra Huddleston Link to Downloadable Press Release Traces of Time explores how walking – in particular walking in a park – influences our perception of space and place. Through a close, meditative, and pedestrian observation of […]
Julie Poitras Santos, flight Paths (2018)
“In Flight Paths participants were invited to walk together, considering significant moments of departure. Whether actual or metaphorical, departure – with its twin, arrival – asks us to give up something in order to find the new, but we aren’t always ready to go. Beginning our walk at the Kulturcentrum in Ronneby, we walked through […]
Walking Meetings
From MindTools: “A walking meeting is exactly what it sounds like: a meeting that takes place while its participants are walking around. It could involve just a few minutes’ “walk and talk” with a colleague en route to another part of the building. Or, it could be a more organized 20-minute stride around the park […]
Graeme Miller, Linked (2003-)
“Commissioned by the Museum of London, Graeme Miller’s ongoing Linked project opened in July 2003 as a massive semi-permanent sound work and off-site exhibition of the contemporary collection of the Museum of London. Stretching across from Hackney Marshes to Redbridge, the M11 Link Road was completed in 1999 after the demolition of 400 homes, including […]
Carol Maurer, Walking Forward, Looking Back (2018-19)
“Walking forward, looking back is a practice-based project utilizing a journey through the landscape. Artist Carol Maurer walks from her ancestral home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland through Delaware to Chester County PA, collecting stories, photos, memories and objects along the route. Rediscovering histories – both true and false. The journey began as a […]
Kristina Borg, The Cities Within (2016) Alternative DIY Walk – Vienna, Austria
Kristina Borg “In 2016, the methodology and practice outlined in the previous section (Alternative DIY Walks) resulted in the project The Cities Within. This walk was specific to the city of Vienna (Austria), precisely to the neighbourhoods of Leopoldstadt and Favoriten, the 2nd and the 10th districts respectively. This project was made possible as part […]
Peter Hutchinson, Foraging (1970)
Basically it is an account in photographs and text (there was also a film) of a six-day backpacking hike through the Snowmass Wilderness of Colorado. The expedition became for him “one of those short times that subjectively is greater than a lifetime.” He accounts of the trip in Art in America in 1972, and later […]
Bani Abidi, Security Barriers A-Z (2009-19)
Bani Abidi, (1971-) in Karachi (PK), lives and works in Karachi and Delhi (IN) “26 Inkjet Prints, 29.7 x 42.0cm A design typology of security barriers found on the streets of Karachi (2009 – 2019). These barriers, which started making an entry into Karachi’s streets soon after the attack on the Twin Towers in NY […]
Girolamo Frigimelica, Villa Pisani Maze (1721)
A renaissance maze in Italy “Local lore holds that the hedge maze at Villa Pisani is so challenging, Napoleon was lost in it when he lived in the villa, and Hitler and Mussolini were too chicken to go into it at all. The maze is a classic medieval circular path with nine concentric repeating patterns […]
Mollie Rice, “Field Study, Parramatta Road” (2018)
“Mollie Rice explores human spatiality, and sensations of place, through an experimental drawing practice. Multiple visits to a particular site by the artist yield sound recordings, which are then translated into drawings in the studio, creating a complex connection between percpetion and place, action and experience. The works in this exhibition were created through a […]
Margaret Seymour, Walking in the Colour Field: Local and Remote (2018)
“WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD: LOCAL AND REMOTE (2018) ArticulateUpstairs, Articulate Project Space, Leichhardt, Sydney. WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD is an interactive artwork that takes place both inside and beyond the gallery. By wearing a specially designed sensor armband, two ‘remote’ participants who are simply going about their daily lives determine the colours displayed […]
Samia El Khodary, Iftours (2022-)
Iftar is the meal eaten by Muslims after sunset during Ramadan. Iftours is a project led by a Cairo tour guide, Samia El Khodary, of the tour company Qahrawya. She gathered people for an iftar in 2022 and paired it with a walking tour of local contemporary art. She hopes to showcase works that break […]
Brett Stalbaum and others, Walking Tools (2009-10)
” By Patrick Dow “Walking Tools is a project undertaken by Angela Black, Nichol Bernardo, Micha Cardenas, Cicero Silva, Steve Durie, Chris Head, Atom Leonhart, Todd Margolis, Jason Najarro, Chloe Sanossian, and lead by Brett Stalbaum, academics from the University of California San Deigo (UCSD) in which they used a loose confederation of software and […]
Robert Bean and Barbara Lounder, Breathing-in-the-Breathable (2017-19)
“Breathing-in-the-Breathable is an on-going collaborative artwork by Robert Bean and Barbara Lounder. Their project presents walking as experience, public art and pedagogy. To date, the artists have contextualized this artwork in relation to four sites; 1) Breathing-in-the-Breathable: an annotated walk (2017) on the ruins of a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Polish town of Sokołowsko; 2) […]
Marie Christine Katz, Let’s Take a Walk (2009-)
“This project began in 2009 as a virtual Twitter guided walk. Participants from anywhere in the world join in via @mcayer. Over time it evolved into an on site performance as well. So far there have been more than 55 walks; each is a shared moment—a step towards peace. Walking together, though apart, we’ll journey […]
Vanessa Berry, Parramatta Road: Landmarks and Monuments (2014)
“In the map of Parramatta Road created by Vanessa Berry, quintessential Parramatta Road features like car dealerships and teddy bear stores are elevated to the status of hallowed landmarks. Author of the book Mirror Sydney, and the blog of the same name, Berry explores and reflects the city with the eyes of someone who has […]
Judy Marsh, Left Leaning (2017)
“Judy Marsh’s paintings use the visual language of the structures that shape our movement in the urban environment, particularly of hazard signs and barriers. In these sculptural paintings strips of black and white diagonal stripes protrude forwards with an arresting vibrancy. Left open at the side, the works invite the viewer to peer between the […]
Related
Mythogeography: A guide to walking sideways
2 parts storyThis is the gloriously funny and endlessly fascinating account of the author’s recent journey on foot across the north of England in the footsteps of a man who made the same journey 100 years ago with a dog trouvé called Pontiflunk.Buy it just for his inimitable account of the journey. 1 part handbookThe
Park to Park Sunday walk – Highbury Fields to Finsbury Park
Want to get to know London through its parks? Join a Walk that takes in the Parks of north London. Starting at Highbury Fields we will walk through Stoke Newington and near north London, taking in Clissold Park, Woodberry Down Park & reservoirs, New River walk, and Finsbury Park.
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