Walking in the World

Catalog description

Feet are good. (They help us walk on average 1000 miles a year.) Feet work hard. (They have 250,000 sweat glands and pump out an egg cup's worth of sweat each day.) Feet allow us to do many things – walk tightropes, walk on the moon, go on pilgrimages, join political marches, explore cities, divine things unseeable, stalk people, cruise, trespass, find ourselves, lose ourselves. This seminar will explore a wide range of work – spanning literature, music, politics, experimental film, visual arts – that uses walking as a strategy for knowing, unknowing and remaking the world. Walking as mindfulness, placefulness, protest, surrealism, social engagement, counter-urbanism, intellectual practice, visionary endeavour. Naturally, we will drift through New York, listening to it, touching it, using it as our playground. There will be many creative assignments. For their finals, students will be expected to design new walks.