Walking with the World: Toward an Ecological Approach to Performative Art Practice

Abstract

This chapter considers the potential in an artwork for walking to “world” the body. That is, how movement engages the body in processes by which a relational ecology begins to evolve. I begin with a concept of walking as a “minor practice” that seeks a creative flight from the structured places of the city and from a body’s own capacity to succumb to habit and a loss of breadth of expression. Erin Manning’s writing on the moving body and Arakawa and Gins’ theories on body-space entanglement are briefly explored, and these concepts are then applied to Nathaniel Stern’s Compressionism, a performative work that actively applies the differential potential of movement to explore the ecological engagement of such activities.