Porter une marche (“to wear a walk”) is a participatory artwork which seeks to connect two strangers through walking.

In response to our call for participation, people from around the world recorded and sent us the ambient sound of a walk from their daily lives. These audio tracks are identified by their geographical location, duration, and an optional description submitted by the walker, in complete anonymity. Once a walker’s audio track has been submitted to our archive, they are left to imagine the possible trajectories of their walk worn by others.

The public is invited to choose one of these anonymous walks and to go for a walk while listening to the audio track. Equipped with a low-tech amplification device worn as an extension of the body, the walker-wearer experiences and imagines a shared walk across time and space. While activating the artwork outdoors, the walker-wearer hears ambient sounds of both walks: they may tune in more closely to the pace of footsteps and/or environmental cues, focus alternately more on the recorded walk or their own, and recognize the universality of the walked experience. They may also have heightened awareness of their own walking body as an ambulatory sculpture, a fact which they present to the unknowing spectators in the public space they are traversing while wearing this odd and obvious device.

We chose to use cell phones as the democratic tool by which walkers access the experience. First, walkers are invited to record the ambient sound of their walk using their cell phone voice recorder. Later, the walker-wearer reads the QR code of their chosen walk with their own cell phone before inserting it into the amplification device. Spare cell phones are provided for visitors who may require them. We are interested in the cell phone as a ubiquitous device, in its raw and direct audio qualities, and finally, interested in imposing a distance from it for the walker-wearer who neither holds it in their hand, interfaces with its screen nor uses earphones for the duration of the walk.

The shared walking and listening experience of Porter une marche is inspired in part by research* showing that walking in step – and this extends to imagined synchrony – can increase empathy towards one another.
*(Liam Cross, Edge Hill University, UK)

The project is presented for the first time in the 11th Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada from June 20th to September 13th 2024. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Visitors are invited to activate the artwork in the streets and parks of the downtown area surrounding the Galerie d’art du Parc.

This long-term project begun in 2024 consists of a walks archive for which we continue to collect walks, and whose future presentations may take different forms.