CRITICAL WALKING
Garland, M. (2023). How can sonority be a device for fieldwork?.
Xcol: An Ethnographic Inventory. Multimodal publisher
My interest in documenting and producing sounds (see Sonic Archives) intertwined seamlessly with utilizing walking as a means of data collection during the fieldwork for this dissertation. The intimate relationship between sound and walking was intricately woven into artistic practices and ethnographic methods. Throughout my fieldworks, I critically engaged with walking and its performative nature, drawing upon concepts such as Walking Art, sonic and critical walking, the notion of flânerie, dérive and sensobiographical walking—approaches that I experimented with as a form of multisensorial ethnography (see more in Chapter Artifacts)
Engaging in listening, walking and recording evolved into a socially-driven and artistically enriched performance, guiding me through sensory encounters during fieldwork. Employing a single continuous recording track served as a means to reflect on the myriad narratives encountered while traversing and engaging with the communities of The Dzjangal, Tiburtina and Los Arenales. The deliberate choice to keep the recorder in constant "recording mode," thereby immersing myself in the pre-amplified sounds captured by the field recorder during my walks, aimed to perceive the amplified and intensified motions of walkers, imperceptible to the unaided human ear. This amplification acted as my compass as I moved forward. By directing the microphone towards my surroundings, distinctive sounds would emerge, prompting me to pursue them. While the individuals navigating the cities of Calais, Rome and Antofagasta served as my guides, the particular sounds I discerned propelled me rhythmically and assisted me in making subtle decisions regarding my own positionality as a walker amidst others (see Garland, Maier and Taleb, 2024)
Documentation Walking in Calais, Rome, Antofagasta, unedited, raw material, © Melanie Garland
My first experiment with walking as a method and an artistic process was in Rome (2021) in my first fieldwork as part of the research on the Tiburtina settlement's history. As I have mentioned in my manuscript, my PhD started full-time when the pandemic began, which led me to restrict myself in many research areas, as was in the case of traveling to the fieldwork in 2020. By mid-2021, European restrictions were relaxed, allowing me to travel to Italy. However, there were still restrictions on moving within the city, and public transport was one of the significant areas of contagion. Due to the great fear of contagion, I started to walk around the city between important spots for my research. My daily walks were between 5 and 17 km, making 219.5 km in one month, nearly the exact distance from Naples to Rome. These walks routes become a process of Walking Art, which highlights walking as an artistic practice, engaging walking to an aesthesis of performative approach, fostering a profound connection between body, mind, space and time (see O'Rourke, 2013). This mode of walking through the city have been a significant influence in my own way of walking through the urban space, which, through the lens of the migratory routes encountered in my fieldwork, gave me the opportunity to get inside the autonomous migratory strategies that the inhabitants of The Dzjangal, Tiburtina and Los Arenales experienced when crossing European and South American territory spaces by foot to reach the cities of Calais, Rome and Antofagasta.
My first experiment with walking as a method and an artistic process was in Rome (2021) in my first fieldwork as part of the research on the Tiburtina settlement's history. As I have mentioned in my manuscript, my PhD started full-time when the pandemic began, which led me to restrict myself in many research areas, as was in the case of traveling to the fieldwork in 2020. By mid-2021, European restrictions were relaxed, allowing me to travel to Italy. However, there were still restrictions on moving within the city, and public transport was one of the significant areas of contagion. Due to the great fear of contagion, I started to walk around the city between important spots for my research. My daily walks were between 5 and 17 km, making 219.5 km in one month, nearly the exact distance from Naples to Rome. These walks routes become a process of Walking Art, which highlights walking as an artistic practice, engaging walking to an aesthesis of performative approach, fostering a profound connection between body, mind, space and time (see O'Rourke, 2013). This mode of walking through the city have been a significant influence in my own way of walking through the urban space, which, through the lens of the migratory routes encountered in my fieldwork, gave me the opportunity to get inside the autonomous migratory strategies that the inhabitants of The Dzjangal, Tiburtina and Los Arenales experienced when crossing European and South American territory spaces by foot to reach the cities of Calais, Rome and Antofagasta.