In November 2020 people were invited to walk at the same time in different places every week for a year. The day before an email is sent with a simple prompt for the walk (non-instructional). Afterwards the walkers upload their responses (writing, photos, drawing etc) and one of the walkers fuses these together into a collage. The collages will then be made into a set of cards that can be taken on more walks into the future. The project includes people walking in India, UK, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Walkers have generated new prompts and exchanged ideas for activities that might evolve out of this project. The longevity of the project is an indication of its success in reframing everyday walks and forming bonds of connection across distance. Please go to the website for images of all the collages.
https://www.sallystenton.com/projects/walks-without-edges/
Sally Stenton is a multi-media artist whose recent research has focussed on walking. Her work explores the power of connection through absence and the blurring of human edges. She received awards in 2016 and 2018 for walks connecting UK with Syria and Iraq and in 2020 completed her thesis ‘Experiments with the Edges of Walking’ at the Royal College of Art. She has been busy re-imagining her participatory art practice in the light of enforced human-to-human distancing and is particularly interested in ideas of commoning that might extend beyond the human. The digital frame has become a site of both resistance and embrace.