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Walking Drawing Kinaesthetics between Art and Science [PRACTICE-SHARING]


Carlos Idrobo, University of Turku

 

 

The aim of this presentation is to share and reflect on the results of the workshop and exhibition 'Walking Abstractions' (Sep 2023, Rovaniemi, Finland), which I curated in collaboration with the visual artist Kalle Lampela. The workshop was the culmination of my project 'Hermeneutics of Walking' (2021-2023, funded by the Kone Foundation), in which I did extensive research into scientific and artistic visual abstractions of the human gait from the nineteenth century until today. It was also inspired by Lampela’s walking drawing practices, specifically the use of a drawing box hidden in a backpack. In this process of blind drawing without being blindfolded, the person drawing does not depict objects or space but time and bodily movements while paradigmatically surrendering a big part of their own agency. The workshop included a one-hour group walk around the University of Lapland, two kinds of infinite walk exercises, and individual walks and exercises freely designed by the participants.

 

My presentation will be divided into four sections in which I want to share:
1. An overview of the graphic methods and visual abstractions of walking that I investigated (like diagrams, drawings, photographs, motion capture, gait signatures).
2. An overview of what is becoming a new art subgenre with its own practices and aims, namely the ambulatory- or walking-drawing, which since the Covid-19 pandemic has been experiencing an unprecedented boom.
3. A summary of the Walking Abstractions workshop-exhibition: its preparation, production, and results, i.e. both the drawings made by the participants and their reflections about the process.
4. A philosophical and psychological reflection on the ethical implications of surveillance technologies of gait recognition, and how walking-drawings represent a much needed counter-approach that can alter our sense of self and the way we know our bodies and engage with other beings.

 

I will perform a walking drawing process from the beginning of the presentation and show its result during the third section. The entire presentation will take a maximum of 60 minutes, including the discussion with the audience.

 

Keywords: walking, gait signature, walking-drawing, bodily movements, gestural abstraction


Biography
Dr Carlos Idrobo (also known as Luca Idrobo) is a multidisciplinary scholar and visual artist based in Finland. He trained in Psychology (Universidad del Valle, Colombia, 2014), followed by a Master of Arts in Philosophy (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, 2008), and a PhD in Art History (Universität Greifswald, Germany, 2017). In Finland, he has worked as postdoctoral researcher with affiliations to the University of Jyväskylä (2020-21) and the University of Turku (since 2018). For his latest project Hermeneutics of Walking, he curated the Walking Abstractions workshop and exhibition on walking and drawing (Sep. 2023, Rovaniemi, Finland), in collaboration with visual artist Kalle Lampela.