Physical movement is essential to my well-being; the more challenging life is, the more I need to move my body. In choosing Reka’s necklace City Walk as dialogue partner I have legitimised my daily walks or runs; they’re now officially ‘studio time’.
Reka’s City Walk
Reka’s necklace evokes Mondrian, de Stijl, Bauhaus.
As a walk, it’s a daytime circuit through a city in Western Europe, one with cool buildings, parks, river to cross, special places – probably one where the trains run on time.
The repetition of related shapes and use of line and colour provide rhythm and draw the eye across the piece…
it feels youthful, vivid, upbeat. Lively; almost a dance:
My city walks
For the last 18 months I have been living in Reading, UK (not technically a city – no C of E cathedral).
Reading is not actually a City (no cathedral), but a large town. Walked it almost every day. My walks sometimes with others:
mostly alone.
Cat patrol
Sid
Relationship to the body
85 Reka Feketa ‘s work has physicality and a robust presence. It activates many of the different ways we as embodied humans experience the world:
She uses abstract shapes, which she often articulates so that they can move with the body or be reshaped by wearing; when off the body they call to your hands to engage and play.
The linear quality overall evokes our shared memory/experience of childhood drawings, as well as our acquired mental catalogue of artists who employ this device
On walking
Embodied cognition is the theory that our experience of the world is shaped by our bodily interactions with the environment.
Studies have linked walking to a host of benefits, including larger (and stronger) brains, lower stress, and improved creativity. For some years I’ve been exploring the relationship between our physical self and mental state and the feedback loop that exists between the two.
<24 Black Dog days
In 2014, World Mental Health week occurred during my slot at The See Here. coincidentally, I was debilitated by depression. I did what I could, and committed to a daily dog walk.
Compilation of movie walking scenes: here https://youtu.be/KqteFq3Ty7w