GO TO STAY
If you live in a small place like Boden, you ask yourself at least once in your life whether you should stay or go. It is a serious question and one that is crucial for your life: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
Walking not only means testing the nature of the ground on which I live, it also means reading the surrounding territory with my body. Walking, going away, walking a path also means changing my point of view, leaving my safe position, crossing borders, exploring new territory, reinventing myself and my environment step by step. The uprising begins as a walk.
In the fleeting act of walking, I explore and change found situations, spaces and relationships, I cross boundaries of action. Walking as art is an example of radical aesthetics that reflects on man's most elementary physical technique. The limping Oedipus (literally: swelling foot) solves the riddle of the four-legged sphinx as to which animal can change its gait in the course of the day. The anthropos (the counter-turned) constantly rebuilds his motor base, he uses technical aids to reflect and radically change his physical constitution, localisation and orientation and thus his position in the world.
Can walking as an artistic practice open up a way for me to go away and yet stay in the ground? What possibilities do technological developments open up for people with disabilities to create new (performative) spaces for action? What future, collaborative forms of play do new media hold in store to continue investigating the social and political nature of a secluded place like Boden?
Inspired by artistic practices and scientific research such as those of Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Janet Cardiff, Marina Abramović, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Rebecca Solnit, Walter Benjamin, the Dada excursion of 1921, the Situationist International, The Ministry of Silly Walks, etc., we are looking for contemporary, interdisciplinary projects and designs that open up a social future and play space for an alpine mountain village like Boden in which I can decide to GO TO STAY.
A.P.
