Notes for an aesthetic approach to walking

Abstract

Walking has been dealt with from various points of view and by various disciplines and practices, including art and aesthetics. In order to encompass such a phenomenon in an adequate way, an ad hoc terminology has been often coined. Among the terms that have been appositely created, at least four are worth mentioning: ‘odology’ (John Brinckerhoff Jackson), ‘hodological space’ (Kurt Lewin, Jean-Paul Sartre and Otto Friedrich Bollnow), ‘strollology’ (Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt), and ‘walkscapes’ (Francesco Careri). However distinct and somewhat divergent these may be, the four approaches labeled with these four terms all focus their attention to the relationship between body and space, considering walking as a fundamental moment of the bodily experience of space. For this reason, they can be fruitfully put in relation with the artistic practice of the so-called ‘walking artists’, such as Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, and Michael Höpfner, who pursue the same purposes.