Abstract
If we are to consider that the walking turn is still rolling and actually seems to gather momentum where disciplines, doings and practises come together, then Walking and Mapping by Karen O’Rourke is well positioned in a burgeoning field. For many years now we have seen walking and associated practises increasingly entering into ways of doing geography and engaging landscape. Inspiration has inevitably come from the fields of art and performance studies where walking and drifting still feature significantly. This book and its chapters endeavour to navigate through ‘the cartographic jungle’ (p. xvii), and in doing so it maps and reviews a range of works. O’Rourke suggests that both walking and mapping are the means through which our situations can be made sense of. It is through this complimentary process that we are able to give ourselves a sense of positioning in what is seen by many as a mixed up and mingled world. This book, as O’Rourke intends, is itself a route map through walks of art and cartographic techniques that offer up new and interesting ways of representing space through bodies on the move.
Certain sections of the book begin by reviewing a terra cognita that will be familiar to many of those interested in material like this, who will find themselves being walked over some familiar ground. I refer particularly to Situationist International and the themes of psychogeography as it took form through the work of Debord, Constant and Jorn. This recalls a New Babylon where cities are designed for the purpose of enriching a human life of play and encounter, becoming Homo ludens and practising dérive and détournement. That said, these and other familiar sources are a useful reminder of the influence of these works, and they act as a mooring point in a burgeoning body of work. Here, O’Rourke manages to compile an effective genealogy of how mind-body-feet-earth-senses came to be enmeshed, and how these entanglements came to be represented.
From here we find ourselves propelled into reviews of a broad range of works, weaving us through: Steve Paxton’s entwinings of bipedal movement and perception; Janet Cardiff’s enlivening of spatial encounters through sound and audio; an introduction to Aboriginal dreaming; and Rimini Protokoll’s site specific performances, among many others. These introductions soon flourish into enriching and fruitful explorations of hybrid datascapes, GPS tracking, networked maps, and she asks: what do such collaborative and participatory maps of memory and experience mean for pedestrians in the future? In the final chapters we find examples of multi-faceted techniques of mapping that serve to hybridize cartographies and draw in creative modes of expression from far afield. As such I would strongly recommend this book to postgraduates, academics and geographers looking to get mixed up with the walking turn who intend to drift across interdisciplinary fields, and in the spirit of this book, track their movements.