Walking the wateryscape: Exploring the liminal
First published in 2012
The Journal of Arts & Communities Volume 4 Numbers 1 & 2
Richard Keating, Swansea Metropolitan, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David
Kel Portman, Independent researcher
Iain Robertson, University of Gloucestershire
Abstract
At the heart of this paper is a piece of participatory research around art walking practice. Presented as a pair on interleaved trialogues, the aim is to capture the experience of participation and the array of interactions, debates and perspectives uncovered whilst walking the wateryscape and subsequently. Undertaken as a piece of performative and transversal writing, the aim here is to open up, but refuse to resolve, questions of ways of representing the wet, of emotional and communal resilience and of the position of an art walking practice in representing marginalised and watery; human and non-human voices. In resisting closure and in foregrounding the ‘always in the making’ nature of walking practice (growing knowledge by following a path) the paper faces the unresolved future of a people yet to come. The assertion is that walking the liminal is both an unsettling and unsettled practice that is only emphasised when the walk is performed in the wateryscape.