Small White Pebble Circles by Richard Long: Tate Modern
Published by: commons.wikimedia.org
Published by: commons.wikimedia.org
Walking In Circles Blog
1: Walking In Circles
Confines, Boundaries, Parameters of Permission
This blog feed explores confines and boundaries in Venice, with key factors that motivated civic and religious administrations to define space: health, quarantine, social class and religious differences. Dr Alex Bamji suggests this was a pragmatic response to the diversity of people in the city; an attempt to impose order and congruity onto the metropolis. I’ll be walking these confines and boundaries, looking for evidence of release and rebellion against imposition, and moving surreptitiously through the capillaries of Venice, those infinitesimally narrow alleys that connect parish and public space.
Circumambulation is one of the most spiritual walking practices there is. Circles are probably the most spiritual shape, a symbol of the infinite, the emptiness but simultaneously the whole. Most major religions practice some form of circumambulation for its spiritual significance (read more)
On 1 Dec, I set out to walk the perimeter of Venice, keeping my right shoulder as close to the lagoon as possible at all times and without taking any dead ends.I kept encountering my phantom selves: returning constantly to within visible distance of where I was some time ago...
So how does walking through the labyrinthian habitat of less than sixty thousand souls, but in the footsteps of twenty-seven million visitors each year make you feel? Try drifting off-track, completely alone, as the sun sets or at night (click to read more).
Some thoughts after meeting the ‘New Venice Haggadah Group’ and navigating the city using an unusual objective: investigating which palimpsests of officially sanctioned posters would easily and quickly part from their metal housings when soaked by inclement weather...
This plaque, placed in the dilapidated, soft-earthed cloisters on Lazzaretto Vecchio by artist Herman De Vries, reflects on the 1500 victims of plague and leprosy, buried in the communal trench that divides this minuscule island where the word 'quarantine' was invented (click to read more).
If ‘Walking in Circles’ is about confines and boundaries, then islands by nature have edges and limits. One image that unites this island of multiple parishes and co-existing communities into a single, coherent vision is de Barbari’s woodcut map ‘Venetie’ (Click to read more)