Tag Archives: sense of place

Rachel Epp Buller talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Rachel Epp Buller is an inter-disciplinary artist based in Kansas in the United States. She is the recipient of two Fulbright scholarships, the latest of which she went to wintry Edmonton in north west Canada to make a piece of walking art called “One Hundred Days of Walking”. Her piece has now been shortlisted for the inaugural Marŝarto Award for Walking Art.

Andrew Stuck and Rachel talk over the Internet on a Zoom call about the importance to her of using different media to create work, including embroidery, bookmaking, and recording the sounds of the environment through which she walks.  They also discuss how she maintained her discipline throughout the 100 days by keeping to a ‘walking score’, and how she has exhibited the work.

The interview opens with Andrew asking Rachel to explain a little bit about the Fulbright scholarship programme. 18’11” 8.5MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview:

Rachel_Epp_Buller_podcast_notesDownload

Images from One Hundred Days of Walking, 2022, an installation of 100 accordion books, cotton, and vinyl (one full installation view and one detail).

Emma Jackson talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

It’s a sunny summer’s day and Andrew Stuck is on the Waterlink Way, a green route for cyclists and pedestrians that follows the valley of the rivers, Ravensbourne, Pool and Quaggy, flowing south to north through the London Borough of Lewisham.

Andrew is in the company of Emma Jackson, an urban sociologist at Goldsmith’s, University of London and the Director of the Centre of Urban and Community Research, as she tells him about how she uses walking in her research and in teaching her students. They talk about the research centre and how she herself studied there, as well as what urban sociologists do in general, and specifically, when the pandemic restricted their explorations.

Emma is keen to impress on how every walk is different, even if you’re following a familiar route, as the Waterlink Way is to both of us.  As if to endorse what she is saying, something unusual does occur. 22’52” 10.7MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Emma Jackson:

Emma_Jackson_podcast_notes_Download
River Ravensbourne
A collage from a workshops with people by the river.
Fly tipping on the river bank

Graeme Miller talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Twenty radio transmitters were concealed along a three-mile route beside the M11 / A12 link road in east London by artist Graeme Miller, who in 2003 created a trail of sound that celebrated the everyday lives of the householders whose homes were destroyed along the route when the motorway link was built. Unusually for a Talking Walking interview, Andrew Stuck is sitting with Graeme Miller, rather than accompanying him on a walk. It is a weekend in September, at which “LINKED”, a work he made almost 20 years ago, is being reprised, and he is having to man a kiosk on a roundabout, from which he is handing out radio receivers. As will be revealed in the following conversation, Graeme creates work in which “listener walkers” become the performers. 22’18” 10.5MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview:

Graeme_Miller_podcast_notesDownload
Credit: Graeme Miller
Credit: Graeme Miller
Credit: Graeme Miller

Julius Smit talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

As a former specialist photographer in an academic library, Julius Smit has always been fascinated by the composition of words and pictures. Through a series of walks on the South Downs and in and around Eastbourne where he now lives, Julius has been publishing ‘zines and chapbooks of his poetry and photography, that he has printed and gives away to people he meets on his walks. Andrew Stuck meets him early on a February morning, to walk along the promenade in Eastbourne, and discuss the process Julius follows to create his ‘zines, and how he views his efforts as a way to resist the digital world and encourage us all to slow down. 29’51” 14 MB

Julius Smit

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Julius Smit:

Julius_Smit_podcast_notes_Download

Eye-Glass Zine covers created by Julius Smit:

Clara Gari talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview:

Clara_Gari_podcast_notes_Download

Jez Hastings talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

Download notes from this interview with:

Jez_Hastings_podcast_notesDownload

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

Alex Middleton talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Andrew Stuck is in the company of Alex Middleton, one of the creators of Vespucci Adventures, that encourages people to put away their smart phones, to walk in the ‘great outdoors’.  He has come to Greenwich to walk around Andrew’s local neighbourhood and talk about how he and his co-founder have worked tirelessly over the last five years to build a business around a shared passion for walking.  It may be a passion, but as yet, it is not a profitable business.  The COVID pandemic brought trials but let them also develop the business in other ways, and Alex tells us what their plans are for the next five years, as well as offering some candid advice to anyone considering turning their walking passion into a business.  26’44” 12.5MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Alex_MiddletonDownload

Charlie Lee Potter talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with:

Charlie_Lee_Potter_podcast_notesDownload

Quintin Lake talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Quintin Lake

Quintin_Lake_podcast_notesDownload

Simone Etter talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Swiss artist Simone Etter’s ‘Walk Book’ is full of techniques to disorientate you, not necessarily to get you lost, but to muddle your thoughts, even on a familiar route.  Andrew Stuck, producer of Talking Walking, and Simone set out on a walk together towards a campsite beyond La Romieu in south west France, where they have been attending Made of Walking. They know where they are aiming for but don’t know the way to get there, and once they are there, they are not sure as to how to return via a different route. Along the way, Andrew is convinced that Simone is applying her techniques, as he becomes increasingly more disorientated as to the route – his only hope is that you as a listener can follow it too. 16’38” 7.8MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview of Simone_Etter

Simone Etter’s WALKBOOK is currently only available in German at the University of Art and Design Basel.

Wendy Landman talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Andrew Stuck was attending the Made of Walking gathering of artists at La Romieu in remote south west France, when Andrew was surprised to meet American walking activist Wendy Landman, an executive director of WalkBoston, one of America’s longest running pedestrian advocacy groups. She is here, on an invitation from her college friend and artist Carol Mencke.

WalkBoston walk audit in action in the snow

Wendy discovers that the walking artists at Made of Walking are grappling with many of the issues that Walk Boston has encountered too.  In the blazing sun, they walk along gravel paths, seeking shade, and discuss how walking and pleasurable walkable places are now seen as key elements of quality of life for increasing numbers of Americans.  And how through subtle change in vocabulary, from talking about art to talking about delight  – the delight of walking and of delightful places – hearts and minds of politicians can be won over to the cause of better conditions for those of us who travel on foot.  25’21” 11.9MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Wendy_Landman

Linda Cracknell talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Linda Cracknell is an author who at the time of the interview was about to have published “Doubling Back–Ten paths trodden in memory” a moving memoir where she retraces ten walks undertaken by others, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Swiss Alps and Kenya.  It had been chosen as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 that was broadcast in the last week of May 2014.

To order a copy of Doubling Back – click on the image

Our interview explores how she sets out to write a narrative of a journey on foot, what she leaves out and how she draws in the reader to the journey or story she tells.  Now living in Scotland, her surroundings offer her plenty of variety for walks, short or long, in the surrounding countryside, much of which is devoid of people since the Highland Clearances. Nature and isolation are both important elements in her writing, as are memories conjured or animated by other walks, some personal, some collective some political. Linda has been influenced by the land artist movement, and especially by Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, but is also stirred by the romance of ‘setting off’, as captured in the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson and Laurie Lee. This interview was recorded over the Internet. 29’31” 13.8MB

Download items mentioned in the interview with Linda_Cracknell

What Linda has been doing since our interview

Linda is now writing a quarterly column for Walk Highlands magazine, and an example of her pieces check out  “Putting walks into words” for great tips on how to write about walking (March 2017).

 

Photo credit: Phil Horey  Book jacket credit: Freight Books