Speaker(s): Dr. Bill Psarras, Artist, Adjunct Professor, Ionian University
Date & Time: 18/05/2016 15:00-18:00
Location: AVARTS Areteos, Room 3, Former Asylum
Language: Greek

Throughout the 20th century, walking in the city constituted a source of inspiration, a political action and even a methodological tool for an array of artists, cultural philosophers and intellectual minds. Since the birth of the artist-flaneur (Baudelaire, 19th century), the urban diaries and observations of Walter Benjamin (early 20th), the Surrealists deambulation, the psychogeographical dérive (Situationists, 1957) and the theoretical insights of Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre on the everyday spatial stories of walkers and rhythmicities of public space respectively – all of them revealed the multiple facets of walking.

The current workshop will analyze the cultural impact of walking as an aesthetic and political action in the city throughout the 20th century. It will be mostly based on the methodological and transgressive histories of the flaneur (i.e. Baudelaire, Benjamin) and psychogeography (i.e. Situationists, Stalker Group) as well as on their hybrid results on contemporary art practices in relation to audiovisual means. The workshop – based on a series of contemporary works of art – will explore issues of performativity, imaginative geographies and rhythmicities and semiology of the street in order to explore and reveal audiovisual spatial stories of the participants. The workshop will have theory and practice parts.