Robert Wilson, Walking (Holkham Estate, 2012)

Abstract

Robert Wilson’s Walking (2012), a London 2012 commission for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, invited audiences to undertake a three-and-a-half hour aestheticised walk across a nature reserve. Framed as a retreat from everyday life, the piece required its walkers to perform movement of great slowness. This article examines the performance closely, suggesting that its aesthetic strategies bore witness to an older form of rural tourism – that of the eighteenth century picturesque.

Notes

1. Walking was commissioned as part of the London 2012 Festival, a series of events which ran from 21 June to 9 September 2012, bringing the Cultural Olympiad to a close. I attended the performance on Saturday 25 August 2012.

2. ‘Robert Wilson | Walking’, Norfolk and Norwich Festival, <http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/walking> [accessed 14 June 2013].

3. As part of its revival tour (2012 and ongoing), Einstein on the Beach was performed at both Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Howard Gilman Opera House and the Barbican Theatre in 2012. BAM and the Barbican were co-commissioners of the work, along with several other performing arts festivals and institutions. Lecture on Nothing received its premiere at the Ruhrtriennale in 2012, and was performed at the Barbican in 2013.

4. ‘Robert Wilson | Walking’, Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

5. For more information about the Oerol Festival and the island, see ‘Wat Is Oerol’, Oerol, <http://www.oerol.nl/over-oerol/wat-is-oerol/> [accessed 14 June 2013] and ‘A Weekend Getaway at Terschelling’, Expatica.com, 12 July 2009, <http://www.expatica.com/nl/leisure/travel_tourism/a-weekend-getaway-at-terschelling-1290_9722.html> [accessed 14 June 2013]. A blog written by a volunteer steward offers an interesting insight into the structure and effects the work imagined: Laura Groeneveld, ‘Oerol Festival Terschelling – Project: Walking’, 15 July 2008, <http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/Frisia/blog-300216.html> [accessed 14 June 2013].

6. ‘The Hall | Introduction’, Holkham, <http://www.holkham.co.uk/html/thehall_intro.html> [accessed 14 June 2013]

7. ‘Holkham NNR’, Natural England, <http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designations/nnr/1006078.aspx> [accessed 14 June 2013]; ‘Lost and Hidden Villas | Holkham Hall’, RIBA: Architecture.com, <http://www.architecture.com/LibraryDrawingsAndPhotographs/Palladio/PalladianBritain/VillasInBritain/LostAndHiddenVillas/HolkhamHall.aspx> [accessed 14 June 2013].

8. For a long list of contemporary artists using walking in their practice in a range of rural and urban contexts, see Walking Artists Network, <http://walkingartistsnetwork.org/members-2/> [accessed 14 June 2013].

9. Bill Simmer, ‘Theatre and Therapy: Robert Wilson (1976)’, in Re: Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, ed. by Rebecca Schneider and Gabrielle H. Cody (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 147–56 (p. 151); Shomit Mitter, ‘Robert Wilson’, in Fifty Key Theatre Directors, ed. by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 185–90 (p. 188).

10. Many thanks to Emily Senior, who, in a conversation about the piece and Robert Wilson’s other works, pointed me towards this connection.

11. Christopher Hussey. Quoted in Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain 1760–1800 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989), p. viii.

12. Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), p. 32.

13. Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p. 39.

14. John Stoddart. Quoted in Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p. 55.

15. Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p. 55.

16. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

17. Ibid., p. 56.

18. Ibid., p. 4. Andrew’s Savage Rosa is Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), an Italian artist whose landscape painting was a source of great inspiration to exponents of the picturesque. For biographical information and a selection of images, see the National Gallery’s website <http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/salvator-rosa> [accessed 14 June 2013].

19. Patrick Barkham, ‘Let’s Get Lost: Best Known for Einstein on the Beach, Director Robert Wilson Has Brought His Latest Work to the Norfolk Coast: An Otherworldly Pilgrimage through the Dunes. Patrick Barkham Joins Him’, Guardian, 23 August 2012, section G2, p. 16.

20. ‘Nature Reserve & Beach’, Holkham Hall, <http://www.holkham.co.uk/html/beach.html> [accessed 14 June 2013].

21. Barkham, ‘Let’s Get Lost’, p. 16.

22. Susannah Clapp, ‘A Walk on the Wild-Eyed Side: Robert Wilson’s Walking Shows the Pitfalls of Interactive Theatre, But It’s All Animal Magic at the National’, Observer, 26 August 2012, reviews section, p. 31.

23. ‘Robert Wilson | Walking’.

24. Katharina Otto-Bernstein, Absolute Wilson: The Biography (London: Prestel, 2006), p. 146.

25. Clapp, ‘A Walk on the Wild-Eyed Side’, p. 31.

26. Robert Wilson’s website carries images of the installations and parts of the walk in Norfolk: ‘Production: Walking, a Landscape Installation’, <http://robertwilson.com/archive/productions?production=353> [accessed 14 June 2013].

27. James Turrell’s installation modifies the deer shelter on the Bretton Hall grounds, an estate designed and built in 1720 by its first owner, Sir William Wentworth. Like Wilson, Turrell thinks of light as the primary material in his work. As the YSP website describes, this particular example ‘creates a place of contemplation and revelation, harnessing the changing light of the Yorkshire sky. The Deer Shelter Skyspace consists of a large square chamber with an aperture cut into the roof. Through this aperture the visitor is offered a heightened vision of the sky, seemingly transformed into a trompe l’oeil painting’. The conception of the work resonates strongly with Wilson’s Walking, both in terms of the eighteenth-century venue and the artist’s interest in techniques of sensorial manipulation. See <http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/james-turrell-deer-shelter-skyspace> [accessed 14 June 2013].

28. Norfolk and Norwich Festival advertised for volunteer stewards via a local further education college website: ‘We are looking for a group of volunteers to help us with our second cultural Olympiad event, WALKING. […] During the event there will be opportunities for people to assist with stewarding and audience management. We are looking for volunteers who can commit to at least 1 full day between 19 August – 2 September. Volunteers will gain backstage experience of this high profile event. We will be able to provide transport to and from Holkham & Norwich for those not based in North Norfolk.’ ‘Walking: Volunteer’, City College Norfolk, 3 August 2012, <http://www.ccn.ac.uk/employer-vacancy/walking-volunteer> [accessed 14 June 2013].

29. P. G. Wodehouse, Something Fishy (London: Everyman, 2008 [1957]), p. 170. This passage continues with an appropriately sporting reference (pp. 170–71): ‘The one under advisement, though not a Roger Bannister, was unmistakably on its way somewhere and going all out, and he [Lord Uffenham] sought in vain for an explanation of this nippiness.’

30. Stephen Daniels, Patrick Keiller, Doreen Massey and Patrick Wright, ‘To Dispel a Great Malady: Robinson in Ruins, the Future of Landscape and the Moving Image’, Tate Papers, 17 (May 2012), <http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/dispel-great-malady-robinson-ruins-future-landscape-and-moving> [accessed 14 June 2013].

31. Deirdre Heddon and Cathy Turner, ‘Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 22 (May 2012), 224–36 (p. 224). Exemplary for Heddon and Turner is Henry David Thoreau, who thinks of the walker ‘as a crusader and errant knight, traversing the wild’ (p. 226).

32. ‘The Legacy of Walking in the East of England’, Legacy Trust UK, <http://www.legacytrustuk.org/legacy/articles/programme/the-legacy-of-walking-in-the-east-of-england/> [accessed 14 June 2013].

33. Ibid.

34. The other attendees we met had travelled by car from Brighton (c. 370 miles total, £60 petrol) and Birmingham (c. 290 miles total, £48 petrol). Travelling by train and bus from London incurred a cost per person of £41.50, and for us, because of the event’s delay owing to bad weather, an unexpected cab fare of £30 to return to King’s Lynn, the buses having ceased to run.

35. ‘The Legacy of Walking in the East of England’.

36. Colin Counsell, Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth Century Theatre (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 188.

37. Markman Ellis, ‘“Spectacles within Doors”: Panoramas of London in the 1790s’, Romanticism, 14 (July 2008), 133–48 (p. 139, p. 134, p. 141). Lukewarm critical responses to Walking might in turn be contextualized in relation to the twenty-first-century craze for forms of immersive theatre. While the spectacular scope and scale of Einstein on the Beach continues to impress, the gentler strategies of Walking, immersing audiences in ‘nature’, seemed insufficiently interventionist to some critics, and to offer poor value for money.

38. Otto-Bernstein, Absolute Wilson, p. 47.

39. Bryan Appleyard, ‘Anyone for Crickets? Robert Wilson Can Make Insects Sound Like Angels. The Director Has Created a Glorious Beach Walk Where You Stop to Hear Beautiful Noises’, Sunday Times, 12 August 2012, p. 8.

40. Kate Bassett, ‘Bewitched, Transported, and All at Sea’, Independent on Sunday, 26 August 2012, p. 59; Sarah Hemming, ‘Pitfalls on the Path to Liberation’, Financial Times, 23 August 2012, p. 9; Clapp, ‘A Walk on the Wild-Eyed Side’, p. 31.

41. Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theatre after Modernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 100.

42. Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p. 5.

43. ‘Robert Wilson | Walking’, Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

44. For two fascinating readings of Isles of Wonder, see: Jem Bloomfield, ‘Boyle, Branagh and Bonkers: the Olympic Opening Ceremony’, quiteirregular: culture, theatre, gender, 28 July 2012, <http://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/boyle-branagh-and-bonkers-the-olympic-opening-ceremony/> [accessed 14 June 2013]; and Jem Bloomfield, ‘Caliban and Brunel: Kenneth Branagh’s Speech at the Olympics Opening Ceremony’, quiteirregular: culture, theatre, gender, 29 July 2012, <http://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/caliban-and-brunel-kenneth-branaghs-speech-at-the-olympics-opening-ceremony/> [accessed 22 October 2013].