Encounters
Encounters is a site responsive project based in Villa Torlonia, Rome, taking place over the period of 2 months. The park walls act as a container within which I walk, sit, witness and at times interact with the location, people and dogs. Captured in the present moment, or as memories or fantasies, the interactions, observations and associations were collected with the use of photography, video and writing reflecting the character of the location, the passing time, recreation and lives brought to the outdoors.
The dog and the mask.
The sun is warming and the sky brilliant blue. The park is busy with people and dogs. People on their own or having intense conversations or chatting about their next meal. Larger groups cluster and ramble at a slow pace while joggers seem to bypass them at speed. People with their dogs.... one dog ran through the gates of La Serra Moresca, the panicked owner calling and chasing. One man dropped his mask. When I stopped to tell him, he said he was delighted cos it was one of the expensive ones.
Discarded jackets
It's sunny and the park is full of people. I felt like a witness rather than a participant and I looked for quiet corners. Walking in areas I don't usually go to; I came across discarded jackets, remnants from food and drink consumption. Maybe a murder scene or a place where teenagers hang out, hidden, fumbling and passing time. Whatever it was, I was witness to the left-overs.
Pigs
While searching for things on the ground, an elderly man came over to me and said something about pigs. I looked up and he told me he was from Abruzzo and continued to tell me about pigs and the people collecting food to take back for their pigs.
He repeated these depictions of people foraging for their livestock with pride and intensity.
People
Sky of Rome
Waiting
with Michael DiRosa
Falling on rocks
Rocks falling
Arrangements
Walking as a practice located in Villa Torlonia.
Walking / Observation / Noticing / Repetition /Capturing
Research areas
Land Art: Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy
Books: Annie Ernaux: Exteriors, Tim Ingold: The life of Lines, Edited By Jo Lee Vergunst, Tim Ingold Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, Jonathan Burrows: A Choreographer's Handbook.
Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot
Edited By Jo Lee Vergunst, Tim Ingold
Despite its importance to how humans inhabit their environments, walking has rarely received the attention of ethnographers. Ways of Walking combines discussions of embodiment, place and materiality to address this significant and largely ignored 'technique of the body'. This book presents studies of walking in a range of regional and cultural contexts, exploring the diversity of walking behaviours and the variety of meanings these can embody. As an original collection of ethnographic work that is both coherent in design and imaginative in scope, this primarily anthropological book includes contributions from geographers, sociologists and specialists in education and architecture, offering insights into human movement, landscape and social life. With its interdisciplinary nature and truly international appeal, Ways of Walking will be of interest to scholars across a range of social sciences, as well as to policy makers on both local and national levels.
Life of Lines: Tim Ingold
To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another. This book is a study of the life of lines. Following on from Tim Ingold's groundbreaking work Lines: A Brief History, it offers a wholly original series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human.
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In the first part, Ingold argues that a world of life is woven from knots, and not built from blocks as commonly thought. He shows how the principle of knotting underwrites both the way things join with one another, in walls, buildings and bodies, and the composition of the ground and the knowledge we find there.
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In the second part, Ingold argues that to study living lines, we must also study the weather. To complement a linealogy that asks what is common to walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling and writing, he develops a meteorology that seeks the common denominator of breath, time, mood, sound, memory, colour and the sky. This denominator is the atmosphere.
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In the third part, Ingold carries the line into the domain of human life. He shows that for life to continue, the things we do must be framed within the lives we undergo. In continually answering to one another, these lives enact a principle of correspondence that is fundamentally social.
This compelling volume brings our thinking about the material world refreshingly back to life. While anchored in anthropology, the book ranges widely over an interdisciplinary terrain that includes philosophy, geography, sociology, art and architecture.