“Readwalking”, two words brought together to describe a simultaneous act of reading and walking, of reading as walking, of walking as reading, of sounding a text about walking, step by step, one word calling the other, following one’s senses, like Thoreau.
CD
The double CD (Edition Wandelweiser, June 2021) brings together four contrasting interpretations of an open score and the act of readwalking at its core, each track taking an entirely different direction out there. The individual and collective renditions are based on a radical pruning of David Henri Thoreau’s transcendental essay about walking (1851). Footnotes provide suggestions on how to speak, sing, sound the remaining words, alone or with others, inside or outside, sitting, standing or walking.
readwalking in le puid (43:28) – schuppe (voice), thut (viol)
readwalking in thornton heath (06:50) – waeckerlé (voice)
readwalking in haan (31:32) – beuger (harmonica, children glockenspiel, voice), schimag (lyre, voice)
readwalking remotely (30:10) – reber (field recording, electronics), waeckerlé (voice)
Followed by several more ‘directions out there’: readwalking performances at Klangraum 2021 in Düsseldorf in Aug 2021.
Book
A direction out there – readwalking (with) Thoreau, a pocket size book bringing together the prepared text, the score and two essays: Michael Hampton on the literary flaneur, Vicky Smith on Ecriture Feminine and media permeability, is available from MA BIBLIOTHEQUE.
‘Wherever a (wo)man separates from the multitude, and goes her own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road’. Life without principle, (Henry David Thoreau, 1863).
