walking+writing=excavating (Porto/PT, 2018)
object and performance.
object and performance.
As I walk along a dirt road in central Portugal, I think about the trace left by my passage. A text inscribed on the red ground, evoking my absent body. One foot after the other, I carve into the soil a spatial writing of movement. Cartographies etched into the earth. I then begin to think of a fusion between two gestures: walking and writing. Both could be understood as acts of marking and impact. A possible equation emerges
walking+writing=excavating and variations
An appendage studded with nails is attached to my feet. As I walk, I pierce the ground and, at the same time, carry away some of its material with me. The device imposes a different way of walking, forcing me to readjust the balance of my body. The foot sinks into the ground; the ground remains on the foot. The question is no longer only one of walking, but also of being held by the ground; no longer only one of inscribing the landscape, but of how space also marks me and, quite literally, weighs beneath my feet.
It is as if linear distance could be converted into a unit of volume: the farther I travel, the heavier each step becomes. Relations of friction emerge through the resistance of materials under the weight of my body. To carry the place with me is to wound it, to open a scar. To leave and still have the same ground beneath my feet.
