"I feel uptight when I walk in the city. I feel so cold when I'm at home."
-Beck, Modern Guilt
“A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it, or border other sidewalks very near it….Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull….To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.”
-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
As Jane Jacobs astutely observed sidewalks have the power to connect people and cities, providing both with energy and interactions that allow them to live and to thrive. Why then are so many of our sidewalks empty today? It seems with rising gas prices the thought of streets filled with bicycles and sidewalks with walkers is not impossible, or perhaps even that distant.
While vital to communities and cities, walking is also political. While one often needs shoes to walk, the resources for walking are far fewer than those needed to bike or drive. Freeing ourselves from manufactured items as well as resources with political ramifications is one of the boldest steps we can take. As David Byrne commented recently, “To escape oil is freedom.”
Out of these thoughts I am starting this project, Talk and Walk, Walk and Talk. I envision and hope it will be a voices project, my voice, voices of people I know and hopefully even voices of people I don’t. Auditory maps to guide you, open your eyes and lead you places you might not have gone on your own.
The project consists of people walking and talking. While it would be amazing to talk the walk in person for now the walks will be available as mp3 files. The talker will create a narrated walk adding commentary and insights about things/places/sites the walker will encounter (or perhaps even not encounter). Maybe its fact, maybe its historical, maybe its fiction. It could be a walk of your neighborhood, a city you live in, a city you visit- wherever! Perhaps as the talker you provide answers, perhaps as the talker you provide only questions.
A wonderful convergence is that in writing this peregrination was the word of the day on a website I looked at- “a traveling from place to place; a wandering.”
Wonder. Wander. Walk. Talk. Walk.
As Rebecca Solnit has written in her brilliant book Wanderlust, "...thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something and the something that is closest to doing nothing is walking."
Can you talk and walk?
Can you walk and talk?
Can you talk and walk and walk and talk?
What will happen when you walk, when you talk?
-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
As Jane Jacobs astutely observed sidewalks have the power to connect people and cities, providing both with energy and interactions that allow them to live and to thrive. Why then are so many of our sidewalks empty today? It seems with rising gas prices the thought of streets filled with bicycles and sidewalks with walkers is not impossible, or perhaps even that distant.
While vital to communities and cities, walking is also political. While one often needs shoes to walk, the resources for walking are far fewer than those needed to bike or drive. Freeing ourselves from manufactured items as well as resources with political ramifications is one of the boldest steps we can take. As David Byrne commented recently, “To escape oil is freedom.”
Out of these thoughts I am starting this project, Talk and Walk, Walk and Talk. I envision and hope it will be a voices project, my voice, voices of people I know and hopefully even voices of people I don’t. Auditory maps to guide you, open your eyes and lead you places you might not have gone on your own.
The project consists of people walking and talking. While it would be amazing to talk the walk in person for now the walks will be available as mp3 files. The talker will create a narrated walk adding commentary and insights about things/places/sites the walker will encounter (or perhaps even not encounter). Maybe its fact, maybe its historical, maybe its fiction. It could be a walk of your neighborhood, a city you live in, a city you visit- wherever! Perhaps as the talker you provide answers, perhaps as the talker you provide only questions.
A wonderful convergence is that in writing this peregrination was the word of the day on a website I looked at- “a traveling from place to place; a wandering.”
Wonder. Wander. Walk. Talk. Walk.
As Rebecca Solnit has written in her brilliant book Wanderlust, "...thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something and the something that is closest to doing nothing is walking."
Can you talk and walk?
Can you walk and talk?
Can you talk and walk and walk and talk?
What will happen when you walk, when you talk?
Perhaps you’ll get to know your city, perhaps you’ll get to know your neighbors.
Let’s find out!
The first walk will be posted very soon.
In the meantime here are a few walks by others:
Rikrit Tiravanija
Francis Alÿs
John Sloan’s New York
Janet Cardiff
Kianga Ford
Mapping Baltimore's Monuments
The first walk will be posted very soon.
In the meantime here are a few walks by others:
Rikrit Tiravanija
Francis Alÿs
John Sloan’s New York
Janet Cardiff
Kianga Ford
Mapping Baltimore's Monuments
Ministry of Silly Walks (perhaps not so much a part of this project, but it's good fun)
Want to talk and walk? Email me. My yahoo account is juliejeanus. If you don't have the means to record your talk, you can submit it as a document or pass it along in written form to me to record.
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