Politicised Landscapes - Walking without Footprints: A Curatorial Perspective

INVITATION to the fourth event of the POLITICISED LANDSCAPES program

Thursday, 31 March 2016, 6:30 p.m.

MAJA AND REUBEN FOWKES
Translocal Institute, Budapest

Walking without Footprints: A Curatorial Perspective
Presentation and Talk with Axel Braun

Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
1051 Budapest, Arany János u. 32.

To walk in the landscape today is to do so with awareness of the anthropogenic transformation of the natural world, while walking in the urban environment synchronises the rhythm of our steps with the great acceleration of the high-tech city. This talk investigates how in today’s twenty-four seven culture, where minimising time and maximising speed is a prerequisite, the choice to move through the world at a pace of five kilometres an hour could create the conditions to reconnect with ecological realities. The exhibition Walking without Footprints considered artistic practices that address walking as a strategy to rethink our relationship to the natural environment and devise exquisite tactics for uncovering new vistas of the overbuilt city. It was conceived as an invitation to experience walking both as an engaging and political, as well as a contemplative and liberating activity that holds out the promise of bringing us an inch closer to a more ecological existence.

ABOUT MAJA AND REUBEN FOWKES

Drs Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians and curators who work out of Budapest and London. They are founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, a centre for transnational research into East European art and ecology based in Budapest that operates across the disciplinary boundaries of art history, contemporary art and ecological thought. Maja Fowkes is the author of The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (CEU Press, 2015). They teach a course on Visual Cultures of the Anthropocene at Central European University as part of a new Environmental Humanities Initiative within the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy. Recent projects include the Experimental Reading Room (2014-16), the River School (2013-15) and the exhibition Walking without Footprints (2015-16). www.translocal.org