Category Archives: Artist

Interviews with artists

Anna Luyten talking walking

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Anna Luyten is a Belgian academic working across a number of disciplines, including journalism and non-fiction writing, theatre, change management and philosophy. Her interests include teaching by wandering, creating collective confusion amongst her students, and encouraging flexible gazing of the layers of daily life, all of which is engendered through walking. Influenced as much by American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, as by German philosopher and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin, she teaches ‘wandering as a discipline’ for which she has defined four pillars of walking. With only a narrow window of time in our busy schedules, Andrew Stuck meets Anna outside Tate Modern, in London on a busy and crowded summer Saturday, having to record snatches of their conversation when they find quieter places. The interview opens with Andrew asking Anna to explain each of the four pillars. 18’02” 8.5MB

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Ivana Pinna talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is in the medieval heart of Vic, in Catalunya; its narrow streets are not very conducive to recording an interview as sounds reverberate off the stone facades.

He set out originally to interview Thomas Keis and Ivana Pinna, who together have set up an artist residency on the island of Sardinia.  As you learn through the conversation, after the suggestion of Thomas, Andrew interviews Ivana alone.

As they weave through the bustling streets in search of ambient calm, their much interrupted conversation includes a discussion about “Artivism”, in which Ivana mobilised the community around her Sardinian childhood home in a walking protest against government plans to dump radioactive waste there. 22’39” 10.6MB

Photo credit: Tarek Dakwar
Photo credit: Thomas Keis
Photo credit: Thomas Keis

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Feature image credit: Tarek Dakwar

Yannis Ziogas talking walking

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Out at a restaurant in Gerona having dinner, late in the evening, Andrew Stuck discovers that his plan to interview walking artist Yannis Ziogas the following morning have gone awry as Yannis has to leave on the earliest flight.  So to interview Yannis in person, they had to do it there and then.  They walk near-deserted streets close to midnight, talking about Yannis’ unique bond with Prespa, on the disputed, remote northern border of Greece. 32’26” 15.2MB

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Clara Gari talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is in Olot, Catalunya, in the company of Clara Gari, the founder of the Nau Côclea Contemporary Art centre and of The Grand Tour, an annual nomadic walking art residency that Clara has developed over the last eight years.  Previously having received public funding to run a conventional art centre offering exhibitions, workshops and talks, a political change meant the funding was withdrawn, and Clara struggled to keep the art centre alive.  Thinking out of the box, she reprised a personal walking journey she had made in 2003, in which she walked for three weeks on a 200 kilometre route that linked artists and friends, to create what she called The Grand Tour that now follows a spiral route through eastern Catalunya and the Pyrenees. 22’23″ 10.5MB

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Jez Hastings talking walking

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On a hot summer’s day at a walking conference in Girona, Catalunya, Andrew Stuck is accompanying self-styled photo troubadour, Jez Hastings on a short stroll.  Jez has been known to walk to similar conferences, including a walk through Italy, Albania and Macedonia to reach a gathering in Prespas – walking long distances is in his blood.  They talk about why that is so, and how and why Jez has developed his practice of ‘a pace of purpose without purpose’, of making art through experiencing landscapes on durational walks, and in taking fewer photographs…27’31” 12.9MB

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Image credits: Feature portrait: F.Tanguy Landscape: J.Hastings

Charlie Lee Potter talking walking

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Charlie Lee Potter has had a lifelong passion for working with sound especially in creatively weaving soundscapes to evoke places. As a former BBC radio journalist and foreign correspondent, she knows how the sound of a place helps to tell complicated stories and has applied this to a fascinating series of podcasts recorded on walks called “Inside a Mountain”. However there is a lot more to Charlie than just working with sound, as Andrew Stuck discovers on the walk they take across Christchurch Meadows in Oxford. 25’50” 12.1MB

Inside a Mountain podcast art
Ridge & Furrow artwork
Ridge & Furrow artwork

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Quintin Lake talking walking

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Photographer Quintin Lake set himself a daunting challenge, to walk and photograph the coastline of Great Britain.  It is turning into an 8-year project, as he is now editing hundreds of photographs he has taken on the coastal walks, around what he has aptly called ‘The Perimeter’. Andrew Stuck catches up with him on a bright and breezy day along the Cotswold Way, a favourite local walk of Quintin’s. Although Quintin has spent five years solitarily walking, which he describes as ‘oneliness’, he is great company, and he tells Andrew about why walking and photography are so integral to his life,  and how there is a kind of creative magic in walking more and photographing less.  26’02” 12.2MB

Approaching Skegness, March 2020
Happy camper, Port an t-Salainn, Point of Knap, Argyll & Bute, Scotland.
Quintin Lake
Image: Tom Martin

Feature and portrait image: Tom Martin, all others: Quintin Lake

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Andrea Vassallo talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is in Bognor, in West Sussex on a very hot day, walking around the University of Chichester campus with Andrea Vassallo. Andrea is completing a PhD with an installation in which gallery visitors will be able to experience walking beside him on a long walk. For Andrew, long walks tend to be 12 to 15 kilometres; for Andrea, he chose to walk from his home in Lancing (UK) to his childhood home on the outskirts of Venice (Italy) during the summer of 2021.

If you happen to be anywhere near Bognor in the first two weeks of September 2022, visit the installation and experience, falling in step with Andrea as he walks to Italy.

The conversation is about the walk Andrea undertook and why long distance walking is so important to him and (spoiler alert) we also cover details of the exhibition – the conversation opens with Andrea explaining how far he walked and how it took him. 28’47” 13.5MB

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Hana Sutch talking walking

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Five years ago when looking for places to get close to nature with her toddler, Hana Sutch found it proved to be absurdly difficult.  Although through recommendations, she found One Tree Hill and Sydenham Hill Woods, Hana became convinced that what was needed was a simple app to help solve this problem facing many parents.  She applied her digital design skills and came up with Go Jauntly.  With an infectious laugh and an intriguing story to tell, Andrew Stuck and Hana quickly fell into a candid conversation, about how Go Jauntly came into being. This is a must listen for anyone, who like Andrew, has thought of creating an app, as Hana reveals just how tough it can be. 26’20” 12.3MB

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Fiona Hesse talking walking

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Fiona Hesse, is the guest curator of WALK!, the current exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Gallery in Frankfurt that includes work from more than 40 international artists.  Recorded over a Zoom call, it was Andrew Stuck’s pleasure to learn more about Fiona’s own journey to becoming a curator, her enthusiasm for contemporary art, and in how she  undertook a PhD on walking artist, Hamish Fulton. Hamish was one of the first Talking Walking interviewees back in 2008.  Although the opening of the WALK! exhibition was delayed by COVID, some of the artists featured were able to include work they had created under pandemic restrictions. Fiona reveals some of the criteria used to select works, offers a useful working definition of walking art, as well as suggesting a couple of walking art practices for listeners to try. 24’51” 11.6MB

Fiona Hesse
Hamish Fulton, 35 Walks Map. Europe. 1971-2019, 2019, Druck, 68,2 x 67,7 cm, © the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Schirn_Presse_Walk_Diaz_Morales_Pasajes_III.jpg
Sebastián Díaz Morales, Pasajes III, 2013, Video (Farbe, Ton), Monitor, 12:30 Min. im Loop, Filmstill, © the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid

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Featured Image credit: Schirn_Presse_Walk_Chung_A_Thousand_Years.jpg Tiffany Chung, A Thousand Years Before and After, 2012, Video (Farbe, Ton), 09:01 Min., Filmstill, © Tiffany Chung

Andy Howlett talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham, in the heart of Britain’s West Midlands, walking beside the River Rea with psycho-geographer and documentary film-maker, Andy Howlett, who recently completed “Paradise Lost” an essay-film about Birmingham’s Central Library and the death of modernism. Just before the first pandemic lockdown, Andy joined forces with Pete Ashton and Fiona Cullinan to create a walking art collective called Walkspace.  Despite the lockdown, WalkSpace has grown exponentially, attracting artists, walkers and writers from across the region and support from the British Council.  Andy talks about his own enthusiasms as a documentary film maker, as well as adventures by the Walkspace collective, that have included, a mapping project involving ‘extreme noticing’, a search for the geometric centre of Birmingham and a moonlit night walk in which magic spells were cast, as part of a series called ‘Walkspace erratics’ as well as a forthcoming international exhibition on ‘parallel walking’. 28′.10″ 13.2MB

In search of the Brumphalos

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Anna Dighero talking walking

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Anna Dighero is a contemporary dancer, whose passion for walking is inspired by family walking holidays in the Italian Alps. Not to be frustrated by the restrictions of the pandemic, she sought means by which she could keep in touch with physically-distanced friends, creating audio stories that they could walk in their local neighbourhoods. Weaving her dance experience, passion for walking and newly found interest in geo-locating sound recordings. Andrew Stuck meets Anna in Battersea Park on a warm sunny evening, as lockdown eases in London, and the interview opens with Anna telling us about her dance training. 19’15″ 9.0MB

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Featured image credit: Lucas Chiha-Peng Kao