Writing 1
Megan Scherer
In reading 2: Walking the Line, by Laurene Vaughan. She makes statements about walking becoming a key part in exploring and creating a landscape for the body (aka. you the person walking through that space). She says this "walking enables a personal narrative of the body moving through the space. When considering the practice of walking, we must also consider the tradition of walking as an aesthic and creative practice. Walking is a practice of transitioning, of moving from here to there, or from this to that". She also mentions Henry David Thoreau saying this "For example, Henry David Thoreau spends much of his writing reflecting and illuminating on what we learned from the landscape as we move upon it. Even though we may not literally speak while walking, walking is not a silent act at all. All of the modalities of the body and environment sing a part of the chorus of walking as we shift from step to step: stepping in our through proportions, sequences and intensities of experience which vary according to the time, the path taken and the walker doing the walking" (both quotes from page 317).
I do agree that these statements but I feel like they could expanded on exponentially. I feel the need to argue that walking does not feel like the only form of transportation that can be used to understand the form or feel of a landscape. I feel like the people who are physically disabled need to be brought into account here. Lets say someone with a wheel chair will have far less of an understanding of the hills of Scotland than someone who could walk the landscape themselves. Due to less pathways, and terrain carved out for someone with a specific physical disability. I feel like someone who is graced with a wheel chair will have a much better sense of smell and hearing to understand a place. Instead of the traditional tactile sense of ground under a able bodies persons feet.
Moving into the documentary Rivers and Tides, Andy Goldsworthy, creates art outside in a space that is easily avaliable to the able bodies, while less to the physically disabled. Lets take his rock tower sculptures for example. You have the one on the shore, one in a museum setting, another next to the side of a slim road, and then one in a field of cows. I'd say that the easiest place to get to for a disabled bodied person would be the museum, due to a facility that was made for public with disabled bodied people in mind. While the rock structure next to the shore would be harder for a wheel chair to get to due to the surrounding landscape. I'd also like to point out that the experience for viewing the art in a museum setting vs a shored landscape setting would be very different experiences for a disabled bodied person. Yes, in the museum they would be able to get around more freely, but the sit down experience for the art would be less astounding due to these structures needing life outside to bloom vs a blank canvas space.
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