First Sunday Walk with Morag Rose @thelrm (remotely). Prompted by Blake Morris @formerfresnan #52More
My initial street scene
Looking at the green card at the top of this blog, you will see the snippets of text which Morris found. They were the words and phrases I had in mind, and which I tried to embody, as I set off from my flat in Edinburgh. I allowed features from the landscape and images I came across to connects with these prompts and inform my ‘answer's’ and responses. Do they make a satisfying whole, or are they unconnected? I played around with what came up, as a psychogeographer does:
“We can’t agree on what psychogeography means but we all like plants growing out of the side of buildings, looking at things from new angles, radical history, drinking tea and getting lost; having fun and feeling like a tourist in your home town.”
Billboard, Granton, Edinburgh
“Walking Networks identifies the unique attributes of walking to develop a definition for walking as an artistic medium. Drawing on historical sources such as the walks of the Romantic poets, Dadaists, and the Letterist and Situationist Internationals, it presents a practice based approach to walking focused on the radical memory of the medium.”
When is a Walk a Piece of Art?
When I decide that it is?
When I walk with artist's eyes?
It all depends how you see it, doesn’t it?
Is finding, photographing, and renaming, art?
Is repositioning?
Juxtaposing, then?
Simply taking care to notice?
Changing reality in some way?
Does it matter if it’s not real? Who says what's real?
What if it's been done before, then is it old art?
Hangman’s noose
The Street Scene / bereavement
A woman with a suitcase rushes downhill. The couple with the puppy don’t know why the alarm is going off all the time either. A frayed plastic bag leaves the ground. Remains of the wild flowers and willows which catch the winter sun, blow in the wind. Here is the Autumn-dry, sorrowful scent of rotting leaves and damp soil mourning the summer; there, the awful tearing in the sky of a plane landing. On the bench a boy sucks his fingers, his bike laid out beside him.
Drops of blood
Toward New Landscapes
New and newer to come
These prodigal citizens (I don’t know this is who did it) brought back with them their mutated suburban values of predictability and control
This once was a green space with thriving trees. Sadly, I am not surprised
Help!
In the face of this – agree and disagree through culture.
In the face of this: 'empty kitchens, full hearts .... has provided over 1,250,000 meals to people in Edinburgh who would otherwise go hungry'. In the face of all this: 'Join our community'.
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In truth, the sun came out after that and reframed everything. Trite? Maybe, but that’s what happened!
Here is Blake Morris’ latest work which I contributed to.