An exploration of running as metaphor, methodology, material through the RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale #r3fest 2016

Abstract

This paper runs through the RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale’s origins, curatorial framework, and its potential future impact. Also known as #r3fest, the Biennale is an interdisciplinary programme exploring running as an arts and humanities discourse. Exploring running as creative material, metaphor and methodology, the 2016 edition threw a spotlight on live art, drawings, films and activities by practitioners in the arts, academia and NGOs which have hitherto been underrepresented in dominant discourses in the emerging field of ‘Running Studies’. The paper raises philosophical questions about the synergies between arts and sport. Examples of practice across visual and performance art locate RUN! RUN! RUN! and the paper in the area of curating, suggesting a new way of considering how arts and sports can be organized, considered and presented. My aims include:  widening the current discourse,  inviting curators, artists and academics to consider and generate yet other experiments that activate running as creative material, metaphor and methodology, and challenging existing assumptions in the arts about sport.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank colleagues David Hindley, Matti Tainio, Carali McCall, Annie Grove-White, Alan Latham, Andrew Filmer, and all the participants and audiences of the RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale 2016 for their inspiration and support for #r3fest, which has given me much food for thought, some of which I have attempted to reflect in this paper. #r3fest 2016 was sponsored by Leeds College of Art, and the site sponsors were University College London’s Department of Geography and Cardiff School of Sport. In addition, I would like to thank A Mile In Her Shoes and Jo Volley for permission to use their images here.