[score base: seven black printed
scoured bands with strips of coloured inks painted in between; photo and
score: Julius Smit (2021); score text: Your key ingredients/dictate
the style of walking/FIBER REPAIR: Plant Collagen, Lilac &
Hyaluronic Acid/wait. just for a short while./the solitary and
social intermingle,/COLOR PROTECTION: Oat Lipid & Sunflower Seed
Extract/Must Be Twice Political./and physically shared
experiences./CUTICLE NUTRITION: Silk Proteins/would contribute to ‘the
social revolution’/(the Awkward Place)/transmission/necessary internal
and external protocols/of a postdoctoral research project,/SMOOTHING:
Fermented Rice Water/a pity/the decline of the industrial age of the car
factory/joint labor
of poetic production/the artist encouraged us to take photos/SHINE
ACTIVATOR: Apple Vinegar & Caviar Lime/specifically tailored/to each
country./CONDITIONING AGENT: Professional Silicone/a very small number
of instances]
While making this score, Julius considered the idea of close scrutiny: ‘are we able to discover or isolate elemental makings in/on/under/around the spaces we walk in/through?’ Join us as we explore this question through a walk together, apart.
Read the score, interpret it how you please, and share your walk with us via e-mail or social media (#52More).
Date: Anytime between 19-25 July
Location: Wherever you are
Time: Anytime
Share: Use the #52More on social media to share your walk, or e-mail me with your results and I will add them to the ongoing blog (blakemwalks@gmail.com).
Julius; 19 July 2021; Eastbourne, Sussex, United Kingdom.
Ying and Blake; 23 July 2014; Sunset Park, Brooklyn, United States
Ying arrived early and waited, just for a short while in the Heffernan Triangle. It was our first in-person meeting, after a year of virtual interactions that were mostly editorial. I arrived slightly before scheduled, said hello and locked up my bike. We sat together on a different bench than the one on which she had been waiting and chatted for a moment (the solitary and the social intermingle).
I showed her the score and read it aloud. She confessed that she didn’t quite know how to proceed. “Do we hold it as an ambiance?”, she asked. I had planned the route: through Sunset Park down to Industry City. The key ingredients—the people, the place, the score itself—were accounted for. The style of walking would emerge through the walk itself. We held the score’s ambiance as we walked it together. We talked about what it meant to create an artistic work in the medium of walking.
She carried a parasol. It was her magical weapon (神器), she explained. Sometimes she would position herself to shade me as well (a physically shared experience). We walked past Caviar Lime colored steps on our way to Sunset Park. A new color captured for City Palette.
We discussed the ethics of walking with and walking through. How does the group, its size and its positionality, changes the artist’s duty of care. Both to the walkers, and the place through which we walk. Are we guests, residents, settlers or tourists? How do we account for each of these pedestrian positions, as we hold them, often simultaneously, in our gait? The walk Must Be Twice Political, the implied and the explicit.
When the view of Manhattan from the top of Sunset Park revealed itself, Ying proclaimed herself a tourist (despite her decade long residency in the city). She pulled out her camera for the first time; the artist encouraged us to take photos, after all.
On our way to Industry City we crossed under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (we had both done projects on the BQE). We considered the rise and the decline of the industrial age of the car
We ended our walk at Minnie’s. The hibiscus in our sour beer did not match the ingredients on our walking score, but it felt specifically tailored to my return to the States. As one publican in England explained to me, no one wants a sour when it rains all the time.
Laura; 24 July, 2021; Cardiff, Wales
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