Can the art of walking help the emergence of more sustainable cities? An interview with Professor Luca Vargiu

By Lorenzo Bona

Scholars and experts from different fields of competence seem to be increasingly engaged in reflections and debates around the complex interrelationships between the built environment, nature and economic activities.

A relevant portion of these reflections and debates appears to be gravitating around the problematic evolution of our cities and the related urgency of new lifestyles that may favor better forms of reconciliation between eco-friendly practices and pro-productivity behaviors.

By embracing an economic development perspective, it could not appear unreasonable to think that cultural and creative aspects may play a significant role for the emergence of these new lifestyles.

For this reason and because of my interest in economic lines of reasoning that tend to suggest the possibility that culture, art and creativity can help communities grow and improve their own economies, it arrived to me almost spontaneously this idea: to reflect more extensively on that possibility by doing a quick interview to a scholar whose area of expertise is not economics but that branch of philosophy that explores possible ways of thinking about the nature, meaning, and value of art.

The scholar I have approached for an interview is Professor Luca Vargiu – who teaches Aesthetics at the University of Cagliari – Italy.

One element that inspired the organization of this interview could perhaps be largely related to the nice circumstance that we know each other since a long time.

But I like to think that what has influenced the most my decision to ask him a few questions has to do with fortunate situations that made it possible to me to learn that some of his recent writings are touching on very interesting links that can be found between art, the practice of walking and landscape.

Here below I am delighted to share the interview with my questions to Professor Luca Vargiu.

Question: Professor Vargiu, why is art important in people’s lives and in the various communities in which they organize themselves?

Answer: Thanks for the invitation, first of all. It is a pleasure to meet here after so many years and to find out that some topics, albeit from different points of view, are attracting the attention of both of us.

What you are asking sounds to me like a one hundred million dollars question (or euros, or you choose the currency).

It also appears to be a question based on the assumption that art is important in people’s lives. This is something we are used to take for granted, but which perhaps it would be useful to doubt, at least as a methodological approach to reflection.

For once, we should try to approach things differently and see if something interesting comes out for reflection and, more generally, for our attitude towards art.

And then, indeed first of all, it is not that easy to agree on what art is or on what should be defined as art.

But, if you allow me, I would like to elude all these problems here and get away with recalling a written phrase that I happened to read a few years ago in Malta on a blackboard, outside a door.

I read this phrase the day after the conclusion of a conference entitled “Reconfiguring the Aesthetics”, and it seemed to me its worthy conclusion. Here it is: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.

Question: Some of your recent studies revolve around the possibility that the practice of walking can be interpreted as a genuine form of art. Can you help us understand better?

Answer: A clarification is needed. We should not be thinking that our activity of moving on foot, common to mankind since the time of the australopithecines, can be interpreted tout court as a form of art, although at times it can certainly reflect artistic traits (you know the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever?) and, on another level, aesthetic aspects.

The idea of introducing this activity into the art world can be linked to some artists who conceive the act of walking as their specific way of making art.

The English artist Richard Long once said: “I made the walking into art”. Another English artist, Hamish Fulton, echoed him with these words: “Walking is an artform in its own right”.

This suggests that if we want to take these statements seriously, we must embrace a concept of art that is phenomenologically open to 360 degrees, without any kind of preconceived opinions.

As it is well known, various fields of knowledge and various disciplinary areas pay special attention to the interpretation of walking. To simplify things, the main approaches to this topic can be associated with two main lines of reasoning.

A first line of reasoning could be organized around some scholars who have adopted a phenomenological point of view that leads to focus on the experience of space and body that each person involved in the act of walking can gain through this act. In their perspective the act of walking would be based on the pre-reflective certainty that our sentient body is given as an “original medium” – as the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels recently recalled during a seminar in Cagliari – and that space is, consequently, given as “embodied space” – to use a beautiful expression of the French philosopher and geographer Jean-Marc Besse.

In this perspective, Waldenfels recalled the words ambulo ergo sum (I walk therefore I am) that the French philosopher Gassendi, in the seventeenth century, had contrasted with Descartes’ statement cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am).

In the same vein, we could also recall those thinkers who have reflected on the so-called hodological space – from the Greek word hodós, “way, path”; in other words, their reflections are largely focused on the space that is generated by our body when it is engaged in a process of walking.

A second line of reasoning could be arranged around those scholars who, starting from the very practice of walking, have developed a critical reflection that aims at deconstructing many of the common representations and beliefs involved in any spatial experience.

The so-called walking artists can be placed halfway between these groups of people, given that they tend to conceive their way of making art and of being artists in a twofold perspective: as a means of understanding the sensitive and affective dimension that is linked to the experience of walking; and also, as their preferred method for engaging in critical debates on space and human experience, with effects that can also concern social and political aspects.

Question: Many modern cities or urban areas may appear as a reflection of less and less sustainable relationships between the built environment, natural spaces and the prevailing lifestyles of people. Can we look at the possibility of an artistic content of the practice of walking as something that is potentially functional to the elaboration of more sustainable models of urban development?

Answer: It is difficult for me to give an answer because I am not a specialist in this matter, which is more bread for the teeth of urban planners, sociologists, and people working in other professional fields.

My university recently made it the theme of a summer school entitled, coincidentally, “Walking Cities. Making Cities Walkable (again)”, which benefitted from the participation of urban planners, psychologists, sociologists, literature scholars, etc.

In short, to each his own, and if I speak about things that lay outside my area of expertise, my words can be as good as those of the man in the street.

Having said this, I will try to focus on a few ideas that are more closely related to the role of art and artists.

Many walking artists certainly express a critical stance toward various aspects of our world, although in ways that are not clearly related to the problem of researching or elaborating more sustainable urban development models than the current ones.

Consider that several of these artists, starting with Long and Fulton, previously mentioned, do not make the city their “playground”, so to speak, as they prefer to walk across plains and forests, climb mountains, etc.

Of course, if it is true that, in general, the practice of a free, gratuitous, and slow activity such as the act of walking implies a stance against our contemporary technocratic society and the related celebration of urgency, efficiency, rational schemes of work and maximum profit, then we can think that the walking artists are also contributing to this stance.

This is the interpretation, among others, of the well-known French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, according to whom the walking artist “walks through the interstices and dead time of productivism”.

We must also recall that sometimes the walking artists have also chosen our cities as the context for phenomenology-oriented initiatives.

In this regard, it may be interesting to mention the action called “Shorakapok / The Place between the Ridges”, where the artists Michael Höpfner and Antonio Rovaldi – the first Austrian, the second Italian – walked together for hours on Broadway, from Wall Street to Inwood Hill Park: the first one of the two artists without seeing, with blindfolded eyes, and the second one without hearing, or more precisely with ears protected by insulating headphones.

It is clear that one of the major aspects involved in the action of these two artists is inviting us to see if it is possible to reformulate our own spatial and bodily experience once the main senses that we use to orient ourselves are put out of play: that is sight and hearing – which are regarded as the most relevant senses in the context of a very long tradition, at least in the West, from Aristotle onwards.

Another interesting example of walking art in city contexts may be the action called “This Way Brouwn”. This action – organized by the Surinamese artist Stanley Brouwn – was conceived around a question that was asked to passers-by on city streets: “How can I get from here to another point of the city?”. In order to answer, passers-by were receiving by Brouwn a pen and paper, so that they could offer their responses by drawing the route to follow.

On this basis, he made it possible for people to “discover the roads they use”, as this artist said in one of his rare public statements.

However, the recalled actions leave unsolved one issue: the problematic communication between artist and audience, given that the recalled walks in the open air can be largely seen as private events that are organized without the immediate presence of an audience, or for an audience that can only emerge after the conclusion of such walks (e. g. in the gallery spaces). As a result, acquiring information about these events is often indirect and delayed.

This problem remains open whether we consider it as the limit of this artistic practice, or – as I am more inclined to believe – whether we see it as the very core of the theme around which the walking artists tend to concentrate.

This is why, going back to the question you are asking me, it seems to me more interesting to consider not so much the walking artists, but some “artivists” – to use a fortunate expression recently popularized in Italy by the art critic and historian Vincenzo Trione but already used in the international debate for some years.

I am inclined to say this because several cultural operators that we can consider “artivists”, by developing actions that are often reminiscent of those developed within a cultural movement known as situationism, aim to dismantle our beliefs and representations of the spaces we cross, including many urban spaces.

Question: What kind of initiatives you have in mind when you invite us to consider some “artivists” and their intents aimed at challenging our beliefs about urban and non-urban territories that we cross?

Answer: I am thinking, for example, about the urban and peri-urban exploration activity developed by the group of artists and architects known as “Stalker”, founded in Italy by Francesco Careri.

This group of artists and architects conceives the practice of walking as a fruitful tool both for “reading” and also for “writing” spaces: in other words, the practice of walking could be linked with study and planning purposes.

The attention of this group is directed above all on those territories that appear marginalized, abandoned, ill-suited to any form of planning: In their perspective exploring on foot these territories would help us better understand those metropolitan and peri-urban spaces which, considered as they appear, may be conceived as contexts that are “demanding comprehension”, therefore in need “to be filled with meanings rather than designed and filled with things”, as Careri said and wrote in different occasions.

This could be thought as a way of thinking that, by disconnecting from the messages of functionalism and rationalization, seems encouraging us to appreciate the potentially inexhaustible wealth of meaning of many territories that we cross, even when these territories appear to have no identity and to be at the margins of the urban world.

Something else I think of when talking about the “artivists” and their intents aimed at challenging our common beliefs on urban and non-urban spaces is the idea of a strollology developed in the past decades by the Swiss Lucius and his wife Annemarie Burckhardt.

The explorations or excursions carried out on foot and organized for groups of participants by the Burckhardts, similarly to the actions of “Stalker”, were linked to study and didactic intents. This aspect was present even when these explorations took on the appearance of an artistic performance, in ways that sometimes were reflecting a sense of humor or showing even familiar places as unfamiliar or alien.

A paradigmatic example is the course “Perception & Traffic”, held by Lucius Burckhardt and Helmut Holzapfel in 1992/93. This course included the organization of workshops in public spaces typically reserved for parking cars; part of the same course was also the “Motorists’ Walk”: a walk where participants were holding a windshield in front of them, as if they were in a car and not on foot.

Clearly, this initiative of Lucius Burckhardt and Helmut Holzapfel was focusing on the problem of whether to consider our cities on a human scale or on a car scale. Another related problematic aspect it was highlighting was the connection between the experience of visiting places and means of transportation that are used for that end, given that the experience here considered tends to change when using different means of transportation.

More generally, walks like those of the Burckhardts and the related assumption that “one sees what one has learned to see” – to use their words – were stimulating a reflection on what people usually perceive during a walk.

Their walks appear interesting as they also seem to dismantle many preconceived ideas that tend to shape our experience of places, by showing how such ideas play a relevant role in our perception. From this point of view, strollology becomes the starting point for new reflections around urban and extra-urban spaces, as well as around the possibility of more conscious urban planning activities.

A tribute to the Burckhardts was also present at the latest edition (2022) of “documenta”, an important contemporary art event held in Kassel every five years.

This edition was in many ways a triumph of “artivism” which, in truth, it appeared to me more an expression of activism rather than art: the first to be aware of this unbalanced situation were in any case primarily the artists who were present, or at least some of them, as shown by the fact that they placed these questions at the center of their reflection: “Are we making a work of art? Do we do social work?”.

The tribute to the Burckhardts was part of a project entitled Eine Landschaft (A Landscape), which was curated by MAP (Markus Ambach Projekte).

The project was largely organized around the creation of excursion possibilities along a path of approximately 3 km. This path was made available to visitors who by travelling it – obviously on foot – were in a position to come to know about the existence of local phenomena that were emerging on the outskirts of Kassel in ways largely inspired by themes like these: the idea of sharing, the development of a sense of community and a culture of inclusivity, and the possibility for people of closer relations with nature through small and non-invasive daily gestures. In this light, it may be helpful to recall a few of those phenomena, such as those connected to the presence of urban gardens, a shop for community products, shared and communal gardens.

The route that the visitors were invited to follow was marked on the sidewalks (or small country roads) by a thin blue line. This solution can also be found in other similar actions: for example, in The Green Line, a work of the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, which consisted in creating a painted line (in this case green) along a path.

I don't know if these insights can offer useful answers to your question. I do think, however, they may provide, at least, a possible starting point for further reflection.

For example, it may be interesting to add that several of the recalled experiences, actions and initiatives are didactically reproducible: sometime with some precaution, like in the case of the action developed by Höpfner and Rovaldi, other times with greater levels of confidence – like in the case of initiatives that were more clearly inspired by didactic purposes, like those of the Burckhardts and “Stalker”.

On the other hand, speaking of didactic purposes, it may also be interesting to recall an emerging principle that seems to link the work of many walking artists and that could perhaps favor the advent of a true interdisciplinary methodology: the principle of “learning by walking”. In this regard, some graduate programs, doctoral courses, academic seminars and various other similar teaching activities that are surfacing in France, Italy, and other countries may appear increasingly organized in ways that suggest the relevance of this principle.

Question: Which phrase would you choose – if you had to choose one – to end in a lighter vein this conversation around the possible links between art, walks, and potential development of better evolutionary paths for our cities?

Answer: I would get by saying that there is so much to do and so much to walk.