Turning 40: 40 turns. Walking & friendship

Marking the occasion of her 40th birthday, Deirdre Heddon invited 40 people to take her on a walk of their choice. These varied occasions of walking prompted reflection on what it is to walk with others. In ’40 Walks’, Heddon explores the histories and discourses attached to walking in company, as opposed to walking alone; the sorts of companionship walking allows and call forths; the ways in which different walks structure different sorts of being together – the side by side, the stepping into another’s footsteps, the mutual pauses, the out of step. ’40 Walks’ considers how walking and the practicing of friendship are related; how walking and friendship travel together. Citing examples and writings from the nineteenth century to the present, ‘40 Walks’ explores what it is to walk with. Heddon proposes companionable walking as an instance of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘being-singular-plural’ rather than Emmanual Levinas’ face-to-face encounter with alterity. Heddon finds walking an appropriate vehicle for creating, sustaining, maintaining – and in some instances - testing friendship. Through walking, one exercises friendship, providing a grounding and a materialising. Companionable walks are proposed here as collaborative practices in which instances of out-of-step, to borrow from Deleuze and Gauttari, also allow for generous negotiation and a co-authorship between (at least) two. The walks gifted to Heddon for her 40th birthday are revealed as acts of generosity that provide creative ground for the collaborative cultivation of friendscapes

Glory box: Tim Miller's autobiography of the future

Performance artist Tim Miller has been making autobiographical work for more than twenty years. Dee Heddon explores Miller's recent show, Glory Box (2001), arguing that, both in his practice and his use of his own life stories, he is attempting not only to connect with but to energize his audiences, transforming them into activist spectators. One tactic Miller employs in Glory Box is futurity – performing an autobiography that he has not yet lived. This future is one that Miller compels us collectively to rewrite, inviting us to change his potential life and life-story in the process. Dee Heddon argues that Miller's commitment to and faith in the transformative potential of live performance enacts a resistance to those pejorative terms too easily thrown at autobiographical performance: Miller may work from his 'self', but his work is far from solipsistic, egotistic, or narcissistic

What's in a name?

A personal reflection on Live Ar

Going for a walk: a verbatim play

"Going for a Walk" is one outcome of an AHRC-funded research project, "Walking Interconnections: Performing Conversations of Sustainability". Led by an interdisciplinary team of academics from the Universities of Bristol, the West of England and Glasgow, "Walking Interconnections" responds to the fact that environmentalist discourses seem too readily and without awareness to place the unmarked, able body at their centre. And yet, in terms of daily practices of resilience, disabled people have experiences that are useful for planning towards more sustainable futures. Walking Interconnections aimed to identify and share those wisdoms. Walking was a key methodology of the research. Working with 19 co-researchers drawn from the disabled and sustainability communities, each participant was invited to take a partner on a walk of their choice. They were joined in some instances by Personal Assistants. The walks chosen by co-researchers included harbours, esplanades, national trust landscapes and parks. Co-researchers documented their walks with digital cameras whilst their conversations ‘on the move’ were audio-recorded. The audio-recorded material – more than 25 h in total – was subsequently transcribed and edited into a play by me. The script is presented here. All of the words in the play were spoken by the co-researchers or their Personal Assistants. This is just one possible story made from the conversations, the story I have chosen to tell. "Going for a Walk" provides the opportunity to walk as if in someone else’s shoes and to listen out for performances of planning, creativity, commitment and persistence, risk-taking, resilience and interdependency, as well as listen in to diverse bodies on the move

What's in a name?

An exploration of the use of autobiography in the work of Annie Sprinkle and Bobby Baker

Personal performance: the resistant confessions of Bobby Baker

An analysis of the confessional performances of performance artist, Bobby Baker, in particular 'Box Story'

Walk this way

A contribution to ANTI Festival's 10th Annivesary Catalogue, which offers a reflection of walking art works shown at the 2009 festival in Kuopio

A visitor's guide to Glasgay

A history of Glasgay!, Glasgow's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender arts festival, drawn from interviews with the festival's producers

Engaging arts, impacting PaR

This provocation explores the issue of impact and KE on the use of Practice as Research in interdisciplinary research. I argue that the KE and Impact turn has resulted in the ‘arts’ part of arts and humanities research being met by the use of arts to disseminate research findings or to develop participatory modes of research. This risks the place of practice as research in interdisciplinary research teams. Full text HTML PD

Walking women: interviews with artists on the move

No abstract available