The Walking Library: relating the landscape

ABSTRACT

In this paper I discuss The Walking Library (2012-Ongoing), a walking art project by Deirdre Heddon and Misha Myers that brings libraries into the landscape. Through the creation of site-specific library collections, Heddon and Myers foster new relationships between reading, writing and walking, and link a variety of global spaces through local walking practices. I identify The Walking Library as part of an emergent mode of practice in the artistic medium of walking that offers ways to reimagine our relationship to the landscape and the multiplicity of global networks that constitute our understanding of it. I argue this work uses the resolutely local act of walking to foster a global sense of place and provide participants with opportunities to reimagine the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Walking
• art
• library
• performance
• site-specific
• global
• landscape
• Romanticism
• Scotland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Walking Artists Network is the largest international network focused on the discussion, development and promotion of art related to walking. Based at the University of East London, the network ‘seeks to connect those who define themselves as walking artists – or who are interested in walking as a mode of art practice’ (Walking Artists Network 2011). The network has almost six-hundred members who come from a diverse set of artistic and academic disciplines.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blake Morris

Blake Morris is a walking artist and researcher based in London. He is a founding member of the Walk Exchange, a cross-disciplinary walking group based in New York City. Along with Clare Qualmann (Walking Artists Network), he co-edits ‘Lines of Desire’ for Living Maps Review, a critical cartography journal. His work has been shown at Ovalhouse Theatre (London), Bogart Salon (New York City) and Superfront Gallery (Los Angeles, Detroit, NYC). He currently works as a visiting lecturer and postgraduate researcher at the University of East London, where he focuses on walking as an artistic medium.