Walking and drawing

bodies things words
noting drawing scribbling
walking sitting lying standing
wandering waiting strolling

paths ways loops
poetry fiction oh
composi and construc tions
shadows points so

We walk, stop, walk again, orient ourselves, seek, observe, listen, fumble our way around - in a slightly changing rhythm, at a rather unhurried pace, on foot and not on foot. Along the way, we may follow a conversation or an idea. Everything we do becomes a minor matter of what we are also doing at the same time. Things pass by, we overlook, pass over, there are fleeting moments. We coordinate different actions and speeds that flow into the walk. Informality enables a simplified perception of the complexity of action, makes it a manageable affair, which offers space for drawings, without academic pretensions.

Drawing stretches sequences of walking, brings time and movement spaces into widening moments. It slows down and interrupts movements, but does not make walking slower. It changes the walking, accelerates actions, brings about a personal grasp of things that combines and complements processes of graphic transmissions, interpretations, digressions and notations. Walking does not even pause when drawing, even if we do not move from the spot for a moment. It finds its translation, its continuation: in walking with our senses in the environment and in walking with the pen on the page. What we draw does not have to become a usable motif, an objectification of experience. We don't have to draw at all. Now, at this point, it is about drawing. It can become an articulation and experience of territory, of body and of place, perhaps a trace of all of these. In this context, walking becomes aesthetic practice, a practice of bodily experience and mental reflection. It has nothing to do with promises of happiness, wellness prospects, self-optimisation and coaching ideas. Perhaps it will nevertheless take you further. Perhaps it is aesthetic research, perhaps poetic action.

Walking and drawing work well alone. In a group, other impulses come into play. Conversations can have an effect on what is drawn and when. And even if there is no talking: Each group creates its own special influence on subjective reflections, on situational decisions and experiences. Ideas, experiences, concepts of earlier participatory projects (see Groups), of art and cultural education and pedagogy can flow into the conceptions of the workshops and courses. However, the joint actions do not become school-based courses and are fundamentally detached from fixed artistic or craft specifications and objectives. Drawing, for example, is only one option. Programmatic, traditional teaching of techniques or fixations on the concept of art can be dispensed with. Forgetting art and the concept of art here does not have to mean negating them, but can mean keeping them open, understanding proximity or access to art and its contexts as undefined, mobile, unbound. Potentials then also lie in the oscillation between actions, the criss-crossing transitions of walking, pausing, drawing, doodling and writing. It is their constant beginning and becoming acquainted.