n.24 marzo /giugno 2021

Walking Without Walls, and Beyond: A conversation about art and with Claudia Zeiske di Elisabetta Rattalino

Only what's human can be truly alien. The rest is mixed forest, undermining moles, and wind.1 Wisława Szymborska, Psalm, 1976

Claudia Zeiske is a curator based in the rural market town of , Scotland, where she founded the socially-engaged arts organisation Deveron Arts (since 2016, Deveron Projects) in 1995.2 During her 25 years of work with Deveron, Zeiske and the teams that have supported her work have developed over a hundred projects with local, UK-based and international artists. In Huntly, her curatorial approach has evolved over the years in response to Deveron’s changing relationship with the town and its needs as well as to global transformations.3 Its key features, however, have remained constant: art projects are linked to the town but they also address global issues by making them locally relevant; they promote experimentation that transcends disciplinary, political and social boundaries.

Walking as an artistic practice can embody all these possibilities - or, at least, it does according Zeiske’s practice. Since the mid 2000s, artists’ interest in walking has increased in the UK and abroad. Their artistic antecedents can be traced back to Dadaist and Surrealist “anti-walks”, to the Situationists, and, later, to the works of British artists, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton.4 This field of artistic research was soon integrated into Deveron’s programme, with works such as Hamish Fulton’s 21 Days in the Cairngorms (2010), Rocca Gutteridge’s Walkingand (2011-2012), Ethiopian artist Mihret Kebede’s first Slow Marathon (2012), Scottish poet Alan McPherson’s Minor Paths (2012), and Austrian artist Michael Höpfner’s Walking Off The Grid (2012). In 2013, Zeiske set up The Walking Institute.5 As American artist and scholar Blake Morris observes in his book Walking Networks: The Development of an Artistic Medium, The Walking Institute is one of the three networks recently initiated in the UK that foster experimentation, discourse and encounters in this field.6 Specifically, the Institute’s programme investigates walking as a medium, a research tool and a means of exploration and expression, by commissioning artists’ new work as well as inviting professionals from different walks of life to Huntly. Between 2017 and 2018, I worked at Deveron Projects, curating its public programme. During this time, I was involved in the development and production of Walking Without Walls, a collaborative digital residency with a local artist, Rachel Ashton, and a Gaza-based Palestinian painter, May Murad.7 This project tested the potential of walking and of digital, internet-based technologies as a means of exploration and art-making within very different political and socio-cultural contexts.8 Raising questions about political borders and property boundaries, Walking Without Walls is the starting point of this conversation, in which Zeiske and myself discuss projects and themes at the core of Zeiske’s recent curatorial programme.

ER: When I arrived in Huntly, in September 2017, Walking Without Walls had already started. Could you tell me what was the original idea behind the project?

CZ: I have always been interested in Human Rights, in fact, my early career was in Human Rights. It was only when I came to Scotland that I moved into the arts. And the arts offer fantastic tools for discussing difficult socio-political topics, such as climate change, migration, xenophobia, and public health. As part of my curatorial work, I travelled extensively to meet artists from around the world. With Deveron, I was interested in finding visual artists, musicians, craftspeople, and other creatives who could be interested in tackling these topics in Huntly and within the communities living locally.

During my travels in the Middle East, I came across several interesting artists, but it was clear to me that they would never have the chance of coming to Scotland for an art residency, or even for a visit. No visas, living in war zones, being refugees in other countries… This made me think: how can we arrange to work with artists that could never come to us?

Firstly, I set up a year-long programme of online talks, inviting artists who could not travel for political reasons. Once a month an artist presented their practice in the country they lived in. These artists were: Saddam Jumaily, an Iraqi artist from Basra, who took refuge in Amman/Jordan; Hasan Youssef, a writer from Damascus; Ghaith Adib, a Syrian designer who took asylum in Lebanon; and Adalet R. Garmiany, a Kurdish Iraqi artist based in the war zone of Erbil, in Iraq. Among these speakers, was the painter, May Murad, from Gaza. Gaza is one of the most inaccessible places on earth, with neighbouring countries Israel and Egypt strictly limiting freedom of movement. Many Palestinians living there have never left the 140-square mile strip of land. During her talk, we learnt that she had never had the opportunity to leave her homeland, nor could we even ever visit. Meanwhile, we had recently met a landscape painter living in our area, Rachel Ashton. We were intrigued by her personality, but her painterly work was difficult to align with our curatorial strategies: due to our socially-engaged practice, we had rarely worked with studio-based painters. And then the idea came: We proposed to bring the two together through walking and the use of digital technologies with a simple task: they would take each other on walks in their respective areas, painting each other’s landscapes.

ER: Since its premises, the project has used walking as a means of exploration. This resonates with 19th century en-plain-air artists’ landscape painting – looking for a suitable spot to pain, if it was not for the complex political circumstances of Gaza and limits posed by the digital technologies…

CZ: During the first phases of the project they learnt about each other’s lives, habits and environment. Then they selected peculiar aspects of each other’s landscape to represent. Rachel Ashton painted what May could show to her of Gaza: her grandmother’s garden; the entrance to Nuseirat Camp, a refugee camp located in the Gaza Strip; the generator that allowed May to have electricity during the power cuts imposed by the Israeli government. Gaza overlooks the Mediterranean sea, but its beaches are patrolled by the militia: people do not even imagine walking along the coast for leisure [fig. 1]. So, Rachel painted a seawall, built by the Palestinians to protect the shore from the waves. Meanwhile, for the first time, May Murad painted green hills and snow scenes, but also wooden fencing and field gates, learning a different – Scottish – way to roam the land.

ER: In their paintings, we can see how the land is inscribed with the practices and histories of power(s)… It is also interesting that their works acknowledge the mediation of technologies adopted to the making process – thus implicitly reinforcing their geographical and cultural distance. Rachel, who in her painterly production tends to cover every single inch of the canvas, made her views of Gaza emerge from a white background, as if they were a vision. Her paintings reflect the fragmented nature of the digital exchange. Adopting a different visual strategy, May painted the frame of WhatsApp on a few her canvases, reminding the viewer of the limited experience she had of Rachel’s land, and thus her unfamiliarity with the not-so-bucolic landscape of Scotland.

Beside testing the digital potential for painting making, what about the experimental ways in which the artists used walking?

CZ: During their walks, both artists also collected herbs, wild flowers and other healing plants. Taking inspiration from the German philosopher, economist, and anti-war activist, Rosa Luxemburg, who created an herbarium while imprisoned for her beliefs, they produced two artists’ herbariums, in both Arabic and English.9 To May, the herbariums became a way for the artists to reconnect with local traditions; in Rachel’s case, it was an opportunity to widen her knowledge of plants’ healing properties.

ER: Flipping through the pages of the herbariums books, I remember noticing the presence of similar plants in both herbariums: the Taraxacum Officinale, for instance. After all, plants know no political borders.10 But Rachel and May’s walks were also practice for the final event of the project: a Slow Marathon, right? Could you tell me a little about the Slow Marathon as a key event in your annual programme for Deveron Projects, and how this idea of plotting a route became a tool for the exploration of borders in Walking Without Walls?

CZ: Deveron Projects has organised an annual Slow Marathon since Ethiopian artist, Mihret Kebede’s 2012 Slow Marathon project. It consists of a 42-km (marathon-length) cross- country group walk in the Aberdeenshire area of North-East Scotland.11 For this long walk, we work with an artist around a theme and plot a route following existing paths or creating new ones using Ordinance survey maps, produced by the National mapping agency of Britain. Although named ‘Marathon’, the walk is ‘Slow’, without the pressure of timed competitions. It is a time for individual reflection, as a 42-km walk offers plenty of time for thinking. It also promotes convivial exchanges, as around 100 people from all walks of life participate every year, and there are plenty of refreshments along the way. We also provided food for thoughts on the topic of the walk, as we organised a themed conference (The Pathmakers’ Gathering) before it took place. A similar model was adopted for the walk that brought Walking Without Walls to a close in April 2018. On this occasion, we had two walks occurring at the same time, one in Scotland and one in Gaza [fig. 2].

The theme of Walking Without Walls was particularly poignant to the location: the Gaza strip along the Mediterranean coast is exactly 42km - marathon length. We asked May to plot and test the route in the same way as we were doing in Scotland, but we soon realised this was very difficult for her, with the militia patrolling the area were controlling her moves, looking with great deal of suspicion at her walks and at her video-recordings and photographs. This could have had serious consequences for her and for a friend of hers, the journalist, Sami Ajrami, who was supporting her work. Gaza is not a place for taking strolls, in the way we are used to doing in Western countries. Obtaining a permit for the walk in Gaza was a very difficult task, requiring an even greater effort in the context of the dramatic riots following Donald Trump’s declaration about Jerusalem in December 2017.12 But it worked out in the end, and it became a joyful moment of walking, music playing and sharing for the artist and the other participants [fig. 3].

In Scotland, as you can imagine, circumstances were completely different, and we felt privileged compared to our friends in Gaza. We walked from Dufftown, a small town along the river Fiddich, to Huntly. As in every year, when choosing the route for the event, we were testing our ‘Right to Roam’ by finding our ways across fields with complex land ownership patterns and rights of way.

ER: What is the ‘Right to Roam’ in Scotland, and how does it affect your practice and idea of public space in your projects?

CZ: The Land Reform (Scotland) Act became law in 2005. It gives everyone the right of access across land and inland waterways throughout Scotland, subject to specific exclusions set out in the Act and as long as people behave responsibly. These rights are sometimes referred to as 'freedom to roam' or the ‘right to roam’.13 Scotland has difficult landownership regulations, which are being addressed by the current government. A lot of Scottish land is owned by very few people. It is claimed that 50% of the land in Scotland is owned by less than 500 people out of a population of over 5.5 million. That is less than 0.01%! Much of this land is in the hands of absentee land owners, who live in England or abroad. Huntly is surrounded by a lot of such land solely used for shooting and other leisure activities.

As a walking artist myself, I am very interested in this particular law and its practical implications. We have organised numerous projects addressing the issues surrounding walking on privately owned land, such as the Hielan’ Ways Symphony, fiddler player and composer Paul Anderson’s first symphony of Scottish music [fig. 4]; or Exploration Aids, a network of hidden site-specific shelters by artist Tim Knowles.14 So, while we have access rights in principle, getting access is difficult. More fences – many of them with barbed wire or even electric – are being put up, there are far too few paths, no signage. So, while access is there in theory, it is difficult for most people to take advantage of. For group events, we need to ask for permission, which is rarely given and it is a big job to organise something like a marathon, where you walk through multiple landownerships, rarely knowing whose land you are along.

ER: Path-making, digital exchange and landscape painting, plant collecting... What was the project’s main achievement for Deveron Projects as an arts organisation?

CZ: Although we have a collection, we have been more interested more in the process than in the production of artefacts. In the case of Walking Without Walls, the project had a very physical outcome: for the first time in Deveron Projects’ history we supported the creation of a body of paintings.15 But as an arts organisation, we were more interested in understanding and overcoming the challenges necessary in order to create a bridge with Gaza and to address political issues and questioning the role of borders. With Trump vouching for Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, the questions around borders, sovereignty, freedom of movement and movement for freedom were omnipresent. Walking Without Walls, long before Covid-19 set in, gave us – an arts organisation based in rural Scotland but working with both local and international audiences – the opportunity to adopt multiple digital means to create a dialogue about these issues.

ER: You mentioned the pandemic. Borders – local, regional and national – that restrict freedom of movement are omnipresent in our current experience. Museum, galleries and arts organisations worldwide organise frequent online events to keep their cultural production going in the current health emergency. Could you give me an example of a recent project that you think benefited from these modes of digital, internet-based work?

CZ: As I have already mentioned, digital working was a way of connecting with artists, arts organisations and other professionals from further afield for us long before Covid-19 allowed other people to discover it. When the pandemic set in, we had to think fast. Would our yearly Slow Marathon go ahead this year, or would it be cancelled? Our plan for 2020 was to work with Iman Tajik, an artist originally from Iran, who has been experiencing an immigration and asylum orbit in Europe and in the UK, and now lives in Glasgow.16 On the occasion of the Glasgow International Festival, we intended to arrange a walk from the city centre to Dungavel House. Dungavel House is Scotland’s notorious immigration detention facility in Strathaven, where many asylum seekers are housed before being repatriated.17 In the circumstances of the pandemic, a group walk was clearly not possible.18 So, for the moment, we decided to change track, looking at the globally-shared experience of Covid-19. This the starting point of the project Under One Sky.19 We asked people from across the globe to log in and collect miles and marathons until collectively, we had walked across 40075 km of our globe. For this purpose, we set up a mileage logging system on our website. People also sent images of the sky above them. From all the pictures, Iman produced a collage, entitled Under One Sky [fig. 5].20 Only one, out of 1500 photographs, was completely black – representing the sky over the refugees in Dungavel.

ER: The online project was not the only activity that Deveron Projects organised during the pandemic.21 What did you and your team set up for your local community at this challenging time? CZ: Covid-19 and its many and changing regulations gave us an opportunity to wonder at what point do we become important to people in our town and further afield? Is it not in times of crisis that we are needed? Under One Sky brought people from across the world, in total ,36 countries, together. It gave people a purpose to go out and walk, keep fit and be with others, albeit socially and geographically distanced. Likewise, we needed to react here locally - food became scarce. And so, we set up an honesty shop, where people could swap plants, and seeds and other necessary items. We baked and cooked, and the fire-red honesty shop became the lifeline of the town. The Neep and Okra kitchen also played a key role.22 Founded by Kawther Luay, an Iraqi-Scottish artist and chef, it is a sustainable fusion-food project, where cooking and eating together - like walking - allows us to cross boundaries, creating the opportunity for further dialogue and explorations.

Didascalie immagini:

1. View of Rachel Ashton's studio with Walking Without Walls paintings, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

2. Walking Without Walls - Slow Marathon in Gaza, 21 April 2018. Photograph by Shadi Alassar. Courtesy of Deveron Projects.

3. Walking Without Walls - Slow Marathon in Scotland, 21 April 2018. Photograph by Iman Tajik. Courtesy of Deveron Projects.

4. Paul Anderson, Hielan’ Ways Symphony, 2014. Courtesy of Deveron Projects

5. Iman Tajik, Under One Sky, 2020. Courtesy of Deveron Projects and the artist.

1 Wislawa Szymborska, "Psalm" (1976), The Iowa Review, 30.2 (2000): 24-24. 2 https://www.deveron-projects.com. 3 The first reflection throughout Zeiske’s curatorial approach is: Nuno Sacramento and Claudia Zeiske, ARTocracy. Informal Space, and Social Consequence. A Curatorial Handbook in Collaborative Practice, JOVIS Publishers, Berlin, 2012. 4 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust, Verso, London, 2001. Francesco Carrieri, Walkscapes. Camminare come pratica estetica, Torino, Einaudi, 2006. Also: Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio, Stella Sylaiou and Yannis Ziogas, editors. Walking Art/Walking Aesthetics (2018)https://walkingart.interartive.org. 5 https://www.deveron-projects.com/the-walking-institute/. Artist Simone Kenyon and project manager Diane Smith also contributed significantly to its development. 6 Blake Morris, Walking Networks: The Development of an Artistic Medium, Rowman & Littlefield International, Lanham, US, 2019. 7 https://www.deveron-projects.com/walking-without-walls. 8 Deveron commissioned film-maker Alix Rothnie a short film about the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2AAbZ58I5U&feature=emb_logo. The project was presented as part of the Tate Exchange programme in London (May 2018), and in Salzburg, at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts (August 2018). 9 Evelin Wittich, editor, Rosa Luxemburg: Herbarium, Dietz Verlag Berlin, Berlin, 2016. 10 Gilles Clement, Elogio delle vagabonde. Erbe, arbusti e fiori alla conquista del mondo (2002), DeriveApprodi, Rome, 2013. 11 Claudia Zeiske, editor, Slow Marathon, Huntly, Deveron Arts, 2012. 12 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html. 13 https://www.scotways.com/faq/law-on-statutory-access-rights. 14 https://www.deveron-projects.com/exploration-aids/, and https://www.deveron-projects.com/hielan- ways-symposium-perceptions-exploration/. 15 May exhibited her paintings in Paris (Gallery Europia: http://europia.org/may2019/index.htm, where she currently lives and works. 16 https://imantajik.com. 17 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48367896. 18 Iman’s project Bordered Miles walk is now planned for G.I. 2021. 19 https://www.deveron-projects.com/under-one-sky/. 20 https://imantajik.com/under-one-sky. 21 https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/shortlist-announced-award-for-civic-arts- organisations/?fbclid=IwAR2h0KTnQesGBJCT5iwG43mLK3hGGZryUDWl_005X-dXyItiYpEow3wJkzI. Zeiske and Deveron Projects’ team have been featured in The Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/these-are-the-arts-organisations-that-managed-to-defy-the-pandemic- r75bwqswb) for her work during the pandemic. 22 https://www.deveron-projects.com/neep-and-okra-project/.