Full Description
Walking Cities: London (second edition) brings together a new interdisciplinary field of artists, writers, architects, musicians, human geographers and philosophers to consider how a city walk informs and triggers new processes of making, thinking, researching and communicating. In particular, the book examines how the city contains narratives, knowledge and contested materialities that are best accessed through the act of walking.
The varied contributions take the form of short stories, illustrated essays, personal reflections and accounts of walks both real and fictional. While artist and RCA tutor Rut Blees Luxemburg and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy recount a nocturnal journey from Shoreditch to the City of London; architect Peter St John of the practice Caruso St John offers a detailed and personal reflection on the Holloway Road; and architect and author Douglas Murphy examines what he calls London's 'more politically charged locations' in his account of a solitary walk through an area of South London. Ultimately, Walking Cities: London seeks to understand the wider significance of changing geographies to generate critical questions and creative perspectives for navigating the social and political impact of rapid urban change.
Contents
Introduction. Part 1. Site 1.My Kind of Town by Peter St John; 2. London Has to Continually Refresh its Offer by Douglas Murphy; 3. Against Porosity, Against the Crowd: Walking for a Spatial Complex City by Adam Kaasa; 4. Gravesend-Broadness Weather Station by Roberto Bottazzi; 5. Walking | Material Conditions of the Street by David Dernie Part 2. Night 6.London Winterreise by Rut Blees Luxemburg & Jean-Luc Nancy; 7. Night Moves by Nayan Kulkarni Part 3. Writing 8. Point to Point by Sean Ashton; 9. Public Notice by Jaspar Joseph-Lester; 10. The Rotherhithe Caryatids by Laura Oldfield Ford Part 4. Monuments 11.Squatted Somers Town by Esther Leslie; 12. Docked and Parked by Jo Stockham; 13. Freud in London by Sharon Kivland & Steve Pile; 14. Walking Round Trafalgar Square (Temenos and Omphalos) by Ahuvia Kahane Part 5. Music 15. The Travelling Mindset: A Method for Seeing Everything Anew by Amy Blier-Carruthers; 16. Practise. Walk by by Peter Sheppard Skærved Part 6. Dialogue 17. Curling up Tight by Phil Smith; 18. Walkative: A Choreography of Resistance by Rosana Antoli; 19. The Sound of Sweetness on the Grand Union Canal by Tom Spooner; 20. The Optimists by Duncan Jeffs
