Walking Projects
The Walking Projects are a group of experimental artworks exploring an embodied drawing practice. Implied lines are created through bodily movement defining paths that begin to examine ideas about boundaries, territory, intimacy and, fear.
Soundtrack for a run from West to East
The first project is a listening walk, or run rather. The work exists as audio accompanied by translated text. I created a soundtrack from a recorded conversation between myself and my mother-in-law. The sound clip was recorded during my first visit to Turkey to meet my husband's family and captures a moment of intimacy cultivated by fear. The conversation occurred, in the middle of the night as she and I sat alone in a Turkish hospital with my father-in-law in critical condition. Her method of self-soothing was to repeat these phrases aloud as if chanting them. This experience initiated me into the family and caused me to consider the strange role that fear had played in constructing a profoundly intimate experience.
Our meeting location in Turkey was the result of the family's forced relocation following Islamic State occupation of their home in West Mosul, Iraq. They fled together in the middle of the night, and I have tried to imagine what the terror of that flight must have felt like. In reflecting on both my relationship with my mother-in-law and my desire to deeply empathize with her experiences, I mapped out a course from my home the same distance as her route of evacuation the night she fled from West Mosul with her family. The distance from their home in West Mosul to a secure evacuation point in East Mosul was 1.56 miles and they left home just after midnight. Likewise I left my home in Columbus, OH just after midnight and ran 1.56 miles East while listening to the sound of my mother-in-law chanting in my ears. The soundtrack matches the exact length of time required for me to run 1.56miles. I listened to the audio while running and recorded the sounds of my body in flight. I then layered the recorded sounds of my body, my movement, my environment, and my breathing over the original soundtrack of my mother-in-law to create an intimate collaboration of sound.
MIL: Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
You…
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Me: Yes?
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MIL: …are our daughter
You are our daughter
One of the family
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Me: Thank you
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MIL: Yes, Yes, you are our daughter
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Me: Thank you
Thank you
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MIL: You are our daughter
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Me: Thank you my mom
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MIL: You are our daughter
Thank God
God is with us
God is with us
God is with us
God is with us
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Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Thank God
Everything comes from God
This comes from you
My Lord this comes from you
This comes from you
This comes from you
My Lord this comes from you
This comes from you
Everything is welcome from you Lord
DMZ 3040
My second project was a silent walk as well as method of encounter. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine caused my partner and I to realize a need for spacial autonomy, and a defining of territories. We resolved to define a domestic neutral zone where we could interact without threatening each other's need for independent territories. The upstairs became my territory, the basement became my partner’s territory and a green bedroom on the middle floor became the ground where we agreed to meet on peaceful terms. Boundary lines implied by our agreement led to new lines of movement in the space. This led me to a deeper consideration of the role of neutral zones and demilitarized spaces as a buffer between individual identities, national borders and how these might relate to both foreign and domestic contexts. Mutual vulnerability is mandated by parties who choose to enter these spaces and it serves an essential role in peacekeeping. The green bedroom was named DMZ 3040 after the acronym for demilitarized zone and our street address. The video is a record of our careful movement from our individual territories into DMZ 3040.
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My third project is an extension of DMZ 3040 which is a map defining these domestic territories. I digitally modeled our home and mapped the space as a record of our movement in it and our claims to space. The diagrammatic image calls to mind systems of conflict mapping, peacekeeping efforts, wartime strategy, and delineation of statehood.