RUI CHAVES Walking alongside me: listening, moving, performing and mapping the everyday DEBATES | UNIRIO, n. 23, p.1-27, dez., 2019. p. 1 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Walking alongside me: listening, moving, performing and mapping the everyday 1 Rui Chaves Introduction This text focuses on discussing a selection of walking-based artworks produced between 2009-2013 during my PhD at Queen’s University Belfast (2013): walkwithme (2010), intoaforeignland (2011-2012), and Come Across (2012-2013) made in collaboration with Eduardo Patrício and Diogo Alvim 2 . This presentation is preceded by a brief discussion of the conceptual and artistic inspirations that drive this type of practice. At times, my descriptive effort follows a more personal stance. This type of approach echoes Peggy Phelan’s call for a textual engagement that seeks to describe performance work not through “direct signification”, but through a “performative writing” that re-enacts the event through its “aff ective force” (PHELAN, 1997, p.17). In this case, it does so with the intent of reinforcing the underlying discussion of ‘walking’ as a poetic gateway to finding oneself in the world. In this regard, I also strongly encourage the reader to eavesdrop on some of the audio-visual documentation referenced throughout the article. In the end, I will summarize some of the key strategies and briefy mention recent work, such as Escuta/Anda/Escreve (2015), or Do Paço ao Olho (2016) made in collaboration with Lilian Nakao Nakahodo 3 . Starting to walk Everyday walking and its engagement with space, is described by spatial theorist and architect F. T. Wunderlich (2008), as having diff erent modes depending on objective and context, such as: “purposive”, “discursive” and “conceptual”. Walking is not only a way to traverse space, but also a way of discovering and 1 This text is an expanded, re-edited and updated purview of thematic key writings done in my thesis entitled Performing sound in place: feld recording, walking and mobile transmission (2013). 2 https://www.diogoalvim.com/ 3 http://www.nendu.net/?p=39&lang=pt DEBATES | UNIRIO • Nº 23 • Dezembro 2019