Why Walking?
Rebecca Solnit, author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, writes, “Most of the time walking is merely practical, the unconsidered locomotive means between two sites. To make walking into an investigation, ritual, a meditation, is a special subset of walking.”
We seek to carry out this special subset of walking in our 51-mile rhythmic, slow, humble, and imperfect exploration from Canoga Park to Long Beach. Through walking, we will witness what is typically only seen in pieces as a whole. Through this wholeness, as we traverse step by step, neighborhood by neighborhood, we can measure and track minute changes and connections. Through walking, we also create informal and spontaneous spaces for dialogue among students and community members to tell stories and learn from each other about the river. We are curious to see what will happen when we simply slow down and pay attention to the river as it is. Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, writes, “Escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here.” We trust that it is.
Rebecca Solnit, author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, writes, “Most of the time walking is merely practical, the unconsidered locomotive means between two sites. To make walking into an investigation, ritual, a meditation, is a special subset of walking.”
We seek to carry out this special subset of walking in our 51-mile rhythmic, slow, humble, and imperfect exploration from Canoga Park to Long Beach. Through walking, we will witness what is typically only seen in pieces as a whole. Through this wholeness, as we traverse step by step, neighborhood by neighborhood, we can measure and track minute changes and connections. Through walking, we also create informal and spontaneous spaces for dialogue among students and community members to tell stories and learn from each other about the river. We are curious to see what will happen when we simply slow down and pay attention to the river as it is. Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, writes, “Escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here.” We trust that it is.
This project was made possible with a grant from USC Arts in Action.
Contact: fiftyonemiles@gmail.com
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