Walking as Research

Marlies van Hak in conversation with Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Listen to the audio recording

At the finissage of Mind Your Step on November 29th, 2020 Marlies van Hak (researcher and writer) engaged in a walking conversation with artist Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL), whose work often entails situated interventions related to sound and the step. This performative walk was recorded and edited into an audio document, which is made available here.

Walking-as-Research focuses on walking as artistic and performative research practice, in relation to topical movements in contemporary society. While walking we reflect on the relationship between a moving and sensing body, its surroundings and other bodies. Topics that might pass by are: walking as (situated) research / walking as not-knowing / which or what bodies walk? / what or who sounds or listens? / walking and memory / voids, disruptions, intra-actions / walking as relational and sensorial / walking as protest / how to document walking-as-research?

Visitors where invited to join this performative talk in the Amstelpark, in which the wind in the trees might become a conversation partner and we welcome the unexpected. The discussion will be held in English and could be attended with headphones, in order for everybody to keep distance from one another.

Marlies van Hak’s research focuses on the relationship between art in public space, body, affect and memory. She writes for TAAK and Buro Ruimte Rondom about walking and (collective) memory.  As an artist and researcher, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec pays specific attention to sound, new media, real-time interaction and questions of contemporary mediation in relation to the sense of (bodily) presence. His recent work consists of spatial and sound installations, events and interventions, in which (un) mediated sonic events, through affect, question the way in which human physical presence can be felt and sensed and what kind of new poetics this can lead to.