User:Angeliki/Grad-Abstracts & Synopsis

Karen O`rourke. Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers

The book is an approach to make a differentiated map. It is a collection of artistic practices focusing on walking. The writer combines these examples of works that he personally experienced zooming in and out the concept of walking and mapping as an artistic practice since 70s. These approaches are blurring the borders between the fields of art and others.
In the first chapter he starts by describing a contemporary walking project and then generalize the process by referring to the terms psychogeography and drifting, as explained by Debord. He describes then more walking projects till the time of 90s in which artists, and not only, are using algorithms, GPS, low-tech media technologies, political strategies, their own bodies and most importantly are interacting with the public. By walking and giving scores and instructions to themselves they reveal hidden narratives, re-claim the streets with the motivation of understanding their surroundings. Some awkwardness and playfulness characterizes these projects, that reveals the city’s underlying structure and re-appropriates the language.