ro | en
ArgumentNo. 16/2024

The Walking Line. On the Kinesthetic Approach of Space

https://doi.org/10.54508/Argument.16.06

  • / The National University of Arts Bucharest, RO

Abstract

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.

Keywords

kinesthesia, place, space, landscape, Modernism

Download

References

  1. Adams, P. C, Hoelscher, S., & Till, K. E. (2001). Textures of place: Exploring humanist geographies. University of Minnesota Press.
  2. Appleton, J. (1975). The experience of landscape. John Wiley & Sons.
  3. Beaumont, M. (2020). The walker: On finding and losing yourself in the modern city. Verso.
  4. Bloomer, C. K., & Moore, W. C. (1977). Body, memory, and architecture. Yale University Press.
  5. Brain, R. M. (2015). The pulse of modernism: Physiological aesthetics in fin-de-siècle Europe. University of Washington Press.
  6. Careri, F. (2017). Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthetic practice (S. Piccolo, Trans.). Culicidae Architectural Press.
  7. Debord, G.-E. (1955) Introduction to a critique of urban geography (K. Knabb, Trans.). Les Levres Nues, (6). Retrieved from https://situationist.org/periodical/les-levres-nues/issue-6-1955/introduction-to-a-critique-of-urban-geography-98
  8. Debord, G.-E., & Jorn, A. (2006). Theory of the dérive and other situationist writings on the city. Actar.
  9. Dewey, J. (1929). Experience and nature. George Allen and Unwin.
  10. d’Udine, J. (1910). L’art et le geste. F. Alcan.
  11. Iliescu, S. (2022). Experiencing art and architecture: Lessons on looking. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003007654 Jamerson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822378419 
  12. Jay, M. (2011). In the realm of senses: An introduction. The American Historical Review, 116(2), 307-315. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.2.307  
  13. McKibben, B., Tufnell, B., Scott, D., & Wilson, A. (2002). Hamish Fulton: Walking journey. Tate.
  14. Nassar, D. (2022). Romantic empiricism: Nature, art, and ecology from Herder to Humboldt. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190095437.001.0001 
  15. Nicholson, G. (2008). The lost art of walking: The history, science, and literature of pedestrianism. Riverhead Books.
  16. Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. (Original work published 1996)
  17. Paulson, R. (1982). Literary landscape: Turner and Constable. Yale University Press.
  18. Poetzsch, M. (2005, August 14-17). Walks alone and ‘I know not where’: Dorothy Wordsworth’s deviant pedestrianism. [Paper presentation] 13th Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism: Deviance and Defiance, Montreal, Canada.
  19. Samuel, F. (2010) Le Corbusier and the architectural promenade. Birkhäuser.
  20. Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: A history of walking. Viking.
  21. Thoreau, H. D. (1862). Walking. The Atlantic, 9(56), 657-674.
  22. Tuan, Y.-F. (2001). Space and place. The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press.
  23. Turner, P. (1980). An interview with Hamish Fulton. in R. Adams & L. Baltz (Eds.), Landscape Theory. Lustrum Press.
  24. Veder, R. (2015). The living line: Modern art and the economy of energy. Dartmouth College Press.
  25. William, M. (2011). The art of Richard Long: Complete works. Crescent Moon Publishing.