The Walking Line. On the Kinesthetic Approach of Space

The kinesthetic quality of space, with the possibilities of addressing it as a sequence in terms of emotional and physical perception, calls on the immediate relations between spaces, nature-made and man-made ones, and on the implication of creating new cultural landscapes, in a moment of separation between culture and nature is a given. In these intersectional nodes of three distinct departments: architecture, ecology, and (land) art, novel questions emerge about new instances of space? What could we, for example, call a field of windmills or one of solar panels? Where are the invasive and protective land interventions in today’s cultural context? Without finding a one-size-fits-all answer, this article explores perspectives of perceiving space/ place.

In sensory terms, Modernism has actively employed kinesthesia as a trained sense of learning - the inseparable connection between senses and muscle reaction. This sixth sense impacted the 19th-century aesthetics and visual perception theories in art and architecture. Therefore, the reciprocal tension between brain and muscle implies a sense of emotional perception that comes with particular approaches to space. Since Romanticism, artists and philosophers have addressed walking as both an action and a sign, such as drawing – an action and line tracing and sign making – as a body implication in perceiving space. With walking as an aesthetic act, human interventions in space or regarding space are responses to natural and cultural triggers, underlying the co-dependency between the static and the dynamic, the settler and the nomad, to achieve a balanced relationship with space.