'Walking as Artistic Practice'

 Walking as Artistic Practice: Crawling

A page on Ellen Mueller's research website about Crawling and Walking as art - featuring my Crawl performance.  

Ellen Mueller:  Ellen Mueller's book: 'Walking as Artistic Practice'

AISLE Performance

As part of GHost III, an evening of performance and film in St. John's Church, Bethnal Green, Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly and I created AISLE, a ten minute performance resonating with ideas of penance, pilgrimage and ritual. Ghost III took place from 6pm to 10pm on Friday 17th December 2010, organized by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal.


View inside St. John's Church, Bethnal Green, looking towards the altar end of the church. Taken during the rehearsal for AISLE - you can just see the blurred crawling figures near the white screen.




The dark pews in the dimly lit church interior for the AISLE performance.




The lights in the church were low, the pews dim, so that their occupants were barely distinguishable. The aisle of the church was comparatively more illuminated, its flattened well-worn pink-red carpet singled out by the lighting as the one route through the church. As the audience mumbled and rustled, after the previous performance ended and whilst waiting for ours to begin, Marco and I made our separate ways from where we had been sitting to the top of the aisle. We knelt down and began to untie our shoe laces. We took off our shoes, and then our socks. Our naked feet indicated the beginning of a ritual, with a sense of awe or respect for the forthcoming actions; coupled with intimations of a dance; and suggestions of insanity and deprivation. Observing shoeless people I notice that they are perceived as the abject, the utterly vulnerable, the insane. On the occasions I’ve removed my shoes in public I’ve been met with concern and consternation. Perhaps looking comfortably hippy-ish or high-heeled exhausted mitigates against this – but as an otherwise-outwardly-normal person shoelessness is a breach of sanity and comprehensibility. In our performance we wanted to evoke the ritual and niceties of religious and other ceremonies where shoe removal is involved - outside a house or a temple, in a newly carpeted home – suggesting reverence, occasion, respect – but to destabilize these ideas during the performance. We wanted to unsettle readings of our rationale, to make interpretation awkward. Bare, naked feet felt liberating, comfortable, practical. It was a route into closeness with the ground and integration with our movements – and a nod to nakedness. Our bare-footedness was carefully planned, yet it went barely noticed at first.




Kneeling to remove shoes at the start of the aisle.




Ghost-blur kneeling to remove shoes.





Starting to crawl.



From our bare-foot-kneeling position we lowered our whole bodies onto the ground and stretched out our arms before us, prostrated. We began to slither-crawl forward. The moment of transition from not-crawling to crawling had the sensation of diving into a swimming pool; of being on a clear and significant threshold - a sensation which was familiar from previous crawl performances. We had done a practice crawl at my studio a few days earlier, where we used the hallway, at the end of a long corridor. The floor is stone, or concrete, and was freezing. We slid side by side on our bellies in the narrow space, negotiating our movements and interactions. The cold slammed into our stomachs, my top riding up so that my belly and midriff were directly in contact with the freezing surface. When we arrived at the church to rehearse on the day of the performance we saw that the aisle was carpeted, and I had a sense of almost-guilt, that the crawl would be so much more comfortable and warm than I had expected and intended. Yet, during that rehearsal we were responded to with the comment ‘You must have done something really awful to have to do that much penance!’ So the resonance of pain and suffering seemed still to be present.




The carpet of the aisle, ant's-eye view. And ghost-blurred crawling figures.





The screen at the end of the aisle, with two 'will o' the wisp' lights, which we are crawling towards. Crawlers'-eye-view.






When we began our AISLE crawl, the audience, attuned perhaps to vertical or louder events, carried on chatting and drinking and glancing around for the first few moments where we silently, subtly moved. Our crawl was a belly-flat-to-the-floor type of crawl, dragging ourselves along with outstretched arms.  We moved towards the altar, slowly, painfully, painstakingly.  Whilst we crawled, from above our heads on the balcony, a choir began to sing a repeated refrain of ‘again and again and again and...’ As each phrase was fading out a solo voice emerged from the opposite balcony to respond with another refrain of ‘again and again and again...’ the single and multiple calls merging, overlapping and pulling each other onwards. The music was mantra-like, enigmatic, ambiguous, but insistent. It was gentle and soothing in the tone of the voices, yet its cyclical and unceasing nature carried an element of threat and desperation, of compulsion and castigation. ‘Again’, a word which was embodied in its performance - an ‘onomatopoeic’ singing. Again, a word which I have repeatedly painted and drawn, on tissues, rizlas, canvas, and which Marco has sung in the lyrics of Rex Nemo songs. A word we have both pondered, and returned to; repetition, repetition, repetition. Again: I think of compulsion, addiction, meditation, repetition, history, pattern, inscription. As the ‘again’ refrain began, eyes were drawn around the church, and to the lit aisle with our crawling bodies, and our presence dawned on the audience.




Crawling.





Crawling heads down.




Crawling head up.



There was silence from the audience as we dragged ourselves forward. Marco pulled himself forward with his fists clenched, his legs a dead weight; tiring, he sighed and groaned at the effort, communicated visually and audibly. His body clad in lighter-coloured clothes than mine, and his accompanying sounds, drew attention to his figure, dominating the dual-crawl. I wore dark clothes, contrasting to Marco’s in colour, but similarly normal everyday type of clothing, baggy trousers and jumper, so that our crawl appeared perhaps spontaneous, part of the everyday world. I crawled differently - silently, smoothly, stretching out my arms and fingers, clawing into the carpet, dragging myself, legs slightly bent to give a little propulsion. I felt lost and contained within the world of crawling, the slithering movement, the sensation of the floor against my stomach, tops of my feet and palms. The visual and stylistic contrast emphasized the difference between the two crawlers – unified in an activity, a purpose, but possibly in competition, or negotiation.




Crawling down the aisle.



Our movements were low to the ground, an inversion or perversion of a conventional procession/perambulation down the aisle. I was aware of the history of processions along the aisle – the routine church services, communions, marriages and funerals that take place there - and of our laying our own ritual over these, our intervention in ritual. As a crawling couple perhaps we prompted thoughts of Adam and Eve, and the serpent, forever crawling and eating the dust – an image of conflated Christian mythology, contorting ideas of sin and shame and temptation into an ambiguous and malleable spectacle. Pilgrimages and penitent journeys which process hand and knee through villages and towns, streets and floors, to end in the church, echoed through the crawl – events of endurance and tradition in some places, but which are unfamiliar in Bethnal Green. Mexican and Polish friends pointed out these histories to me, after previous crawling performances, though the impulse to crawl, for me, came from somewhere internal and unorganized – perhaps informed, osmotically, by centuries of others’ crawls? Our crawl necessitated the audience to suppose their own idea of our purpose. Ahead of us, at the altar end of the aisle there was a large white screen on which two tiny ‘will o’ the wisp’ lights were roaming, flitting, searching. We moved towards these - drawn, beckoned, impelled, seeking, the lights giving a logic and object to our movements. ‘Never underestimate the power of ritual,’ Marco had said to me some time before we made the performance, words which continue to turn over in my mind.





Crawling towards the table-obstacle.



Our crawl had been intended to be, at times, something of a 'battle' - we would verge across each other's path, tussle, barge. This battle would have its climax in our negotiation of an obstacle placed half way down the aisle – a table covered with a heavy velvet cloth, and a film projector mounted on it. The obstacle occupied half the width of the aisle and, we realized in rehearsal, that from our awkward horizontal positions it would be a case of under or around, one at a time. We decided to use the obstacle to further dramatize our struggle. When we were near to the obstacle Marco got ahead of me. I crawled faster and, there not being space for us both to pass through the gap side by side, I began to pull myself onto Marco’s back. I crawled and dragged myself up his legs, across his back, and slightly kicked in order to get over his head and beyond the obstructed bit of the aisle first. It became something of a race. I felt myself pushing my foot back into Marco’s hand or head, ruthlessly, attempting to ‘win’ - at the same time realizing the playful and sexual connotations of this over-body crawl, with its intimacy and familiarity and entwining. Marco’s passive acceptance of my over-crawl unsettled the gendered idea of competitiveness.



Crawling around the obstacle.





Gail crawling beyond the obstacle.






Hood up.




Gail crawls ahead of Marco.



On the other side of the aisle obstacle Marco’s hood fell over his head, concealing his face, making him appear monk-like. We again crawled side by side, the pace increasing as we saw our destination of the altar nearing. The choir’s refrain had continued to repeat, the lights on the screen continued to flit, and our movement and Marco’s groaning continued too. The build up of repetition in movement and sound, its cycle, progress and yet getting-nowhere-ness, created both tension and meditativeness – a sense of expectation and waiting, and also of being lulled, held, suspended...



Arms outstretched.





Crawling towards the light.




Marco elbows Gail.




Nearly at the altar and screen.





At the end of the aisle, by the altar, screen and lights.







...I arrived first by the altar, dragged myself onto it, still on my belly, and crawled off behind the screen. Marco followed, hauling himself up heavily, legs still unused. We concealed ourselves behind the screen, and listened as the choir’s refrain of ‘again and again …’ faded away. There was a pause, as, we presumed, the audience figured out that the performance had ended. Silence of the audience at the end, after their noise at the start. Then some kind applause, and a shout of ‘Again! Again!’ from someone in the audience. Later, we were asked of the time we spent behind the screen, ‘Were you shagging at the altar? I hoped so.’




Crawling round the corner...





...and onto the altar...




...Marco's feet disappearing...






Music performed by members of the Hackney Secular Choir and Kate Kotcheff.

‘Will o’the wisp’ lights by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal.

All photos by Matt Rowe, except last two (below), by Sarah Sparkes.

You can see a short film of AISLE by Sarah Sparkes and Helen Bee on YouTube.

There's more about GHost events on the GHost blog...

...and on the GHost facebook page.

You can read about two previous performances I did involving crawling, 'Dishclout: The Human Duster' and Crawl on these earlier posts...

...and my first collaborative performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, 'Silent Bell Ringing'.

Here's a link to my AGAIN painting in the exhibition 'East End Promise'.

Rex Nemo & the Psychick Selfdefenders + Hackney Secular Singers play Girls Division and Set Your Spirit Free ...at Supernormal Festival, in this YouTube video.

For GHost II, at St John's Church in 2009, I made Crossbones, a short film of the ephemeral memorials at the unconsecrated graveyard...

...and for GHost Hostings, at Senate House in February 2010, the Reverand Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly gave a sermon-performance - you can see a short film of the sermon here

GHost / AISLE

On Friday 17th December I will be doing a performance with Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, as part of GHost III, an evening of performance and film in St. John's Church, Bethnal Green. AISLE will be a ten minute performance, resonating with ideas of penance, pilgrimage and ritual.

GHost begins at 6pm - with performances from 8pm and films from 8.30pm - and ends at 10pm. More information about GHost and the other artists taking part can be found on the GHost blog. GHost III is curated by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal, and is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions and 'hostings.'



GHost III
Friday 17th December, 6pm – 10pm
Performances at 8pm
St. John's Church on Bethnal Green
200 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA - next to Bethnal Green tube.



In 2009 I showed my film Crossbones as part of the GHost II evening. Click here to see more about it

Dishclout, The Human Duster

My 'Dishclout' costume, before and after the performance on Primrose Hill. Photos by Matthew Cowan. And more photos of the procession, by Mat Webber, can be seen on Flickr.

On Hallowe’en, Sunday 31st October 2010, I took part in ‘The Second Annual Disguised Procession.’ It consisted of a group of disguised and costumed artists, musicians and dancers led by Matthew Cowan. The procession began from the top of Primrose Hill at 4.15 pm, moving through the park and nearby streets to end at Cecil Sharp House and the Hallowe’en Music Fair.

I created my costume for the procession entirely from dusters, dish cloths and dirty rags. I processed, and later performed, as 'Dishclout, The Human Duster'. My garment was inspired by my collected pile of old cleaning cloths, and also by the people I’ve seen on the streets dressed in clothing they’ve cobbled together from scraps, rags, plastic bags and other found remnants. These people can be seen on the streets of London, and elsewhere, often ignored, invisible, detoured around – or moved on. They are a locus for our fears of dirt and the abject. Their clothing is an abhorrent and dejected vestment, which manifests and is expressive and absorbent of the deprivations, resources and particularity of the wearer. These ‘dirty people’ make the fissures of society tangible; they and their clothing live in the cracks: for which they are deplored or ignored. I created a persona and costume which took on the role of ‘the dirty,’ in which I literally took on the dirt – confronted it, absorbed it, carried it – I was a vessel for the absorption of dust, filth and distress. My intention was to ‘be the dirty’, but reveal the dirty as the cleanser, as the necessary or inevitable counterpoint to the clean. I appropriated the name ‘Dishclout,’ an old insult for a female servant, as a character who performed a function, a ritual, of accepting dirt, of taking it, revelling in it, of bearing its burden – and of cleansing – a function on behalf of ‘the clean,’ however separate or incomprehensible they might see me as.

I stitched together dozens of yellow dusters, blue jay cloths, white dish cloths and thick white floor cloths to create a dress-come-coat-come-cloak, of draped, striated, folded and layered pieces. Each stitch was a cross, like a suture, a crossing-out, a kiss, or the most basic element in the sewing-mending-making repertoire. I added a head dress, of the same draped cloths, flowing into my shoulders, hanging about my face like a semi-religous or antique costume. A dust mask across my face completed the disguise and held the head dress in place. The garment had arms like wings, wide and flowing, with feathery ends. It was soft, warm and comforting. I thought of the homeless people I’ve seen in their creations, and the rationale of their construction, the living that caused and allowed such garments to come into being, and wondered how the people thought and felt about wearing their clothing.

The procession-proper did not begin until all the disguised participants reached the top of Primrose Hill. But to reach that point we walked from Cecil Sharp House, through the streets and park to the waiting audience. This was an opportunity to inhabit the clean, soft, flowing garment. I walked in time to the ringing of ‘The Bell Man,’ my arm-wings swooshing beside me as I stepped slowly, and enjoyed the anonymity of my entirely concealing costume. I had already been asked ‘Are you a cleaning monster?’ replying ‘No. I am a human duster.’ The procession included a man dressed in a suit covered in bells, even his face; a woman dressed in dead flowers; a trio of female Morris dancers with a gallows held aloft, upon which several Goth-Barbie Dolls were hung; a Knight/Butcher; and a couple in stately Victorian attire with a platter of Black Pudding carried before them...amongst others.

At the top of Primrose Hill is a small round, flat, summit, tarmacced, and edged with muddy puddles and strips of mud, after the recent rain, before the grass begins again and rolls away down the hill. The view looks over all of London, spectacularly laid out before you, with a sense of air and separateness from the city; a perfect place for the Hallowe’en procession to begin. After a couple of performances by other participants of the procession, I began my performance. I walked to the edge of the tarmacced summit and found the first puddle. I dropped to my knees and crawled straight into it. I crawled through it and out the other side. My knees and hands were immediately wet and dirty. I felt the wetness of the dusters and dish cloths as they began to absorb water and dirt, and cling to my body. I noticed the change in temperature as I was exposed to the substances of dirt, the substances close to the ground. Immediately that I began my performance, as I was told later, all the dogs stopped moving and stared at me, then all the people too - wondering what was going on, what was wrong. I crawled a little along the grass, following the circular edge of the summit, and found the next, and deeper, murkier puddle. I realised before plunging in my hands that the dark colour of this puddle would disguise any shit or sharp objects within it; and surely with all these dogs and people there could be all manner of vile content? I placed my hands in, dragged my legs and the wettening costume with me, and squirmed onto my belly, full front into the dirty water. I dragged myself out of the other side, pulling with my hands.

Moving across the grass, I reached an open area of mud, where I dug in my nails and dragged the heavy weight of myself and the soiled costume through the dirt. A man’s boot protruded near my face, and his voice said ‘Lick my filthy boot, you slime.’ I continued. I saw the hill dropping away, and realised the city vista was now to my right. I continued in my circle, glimpsing only feet and catching scraps of sound. I was isolated from the group of the procession and its audience, not knowing if I was watched, unwanted, unseen, ignored or rejected. I was below the level of eyes and engagement, in my own world.

Half way through my performance I began to feel a sense of the weight of dirt, of my dirt, of others’ dirt. The garment was fulfilling its role; it was mopping up, rubbing down, gathering the dust and dirt. And it hurt me, I felt tired and heavy and drained. Yet I also felt a sense of indulgence, of a kind of filth laden ecstasy. I revelled in the freedom to be dirty, to soak it all up. I rolled over, from my front onto my back and onto my front again. I began to enjoy, or if not enjoy, to accept the dirt. My costume flapped and slapped and dragged and clung to me. It was being transformed by the performing process. Its wearing was fulfilling the Dishclout role. I wondered, who am I? What am I underneath? Am I abject? I paused to adjust the head dress, to brush hair and mud from my eye. It was still a dress, and dirty as I was I wanted to look my best. A pair of feet arrived suddenly in view, handing me a small object and saying ‘You dropped this’: my asthma inhaler, secreted in the waistband of my undergarment I had thought. With that gesture I realised – I am a person, not just a garment.

I continued slithering, then more crawling, and found myself at eye level with a crouching photographer. I was aware of the cameras around me, pointing, looking, capturing, and assumed a level of interest and focus upon my actions. It reinforced my sense of separateness: inside the face-covering garment, the layer of grime and weight of wetness, I was hidden, absent perhaps – only the external, the dirt absorbing dress, was present to the world. I completed a circuit of the muddy perimeter of the top of Primrose Hill, inhabiting every movement of the crawl, drag, slither, flap, tangle, dust and clean. I rose to my feet, the garment soiled and heavy with it, draped and clinging to my body, and walked back into the assembled crowd.

The procession then began from Primrose Hill, downwards to Cecil Sharp House. I wanted to whirl and twirl like a dervish, a dusting machine, in my newly transformed dirt-laden-duster-dress. I restrained myself and walked and swished to the clanging of The Bell Man, stepping slowly with the rest of the procession. I wanted also to walk all the way home in my garment, through the city, unknown and unrecognizable, to see how I was seen or unseen. But the wet, cold and weight of the garment drew me to stay at the procession’s destination, Cecil Sharp House, for warmth, hot water and comfort. When I washed I found mud all over the front of my body, right through to my belly, face and finger nails, despite the covering of the costume. I was loath to relinquish the freedom of ‘Dishclout,’ my anonymity and permission to be in the dirt – but felt too the tiredness and strain of bearing the weight of the dirt, and a strong impulse to be clean.




Dishclout, The Human Duster crawled on her hands and knees before slithering on her belly in the puddles and mud around the top of Primrose Hill.


The Bell Man, a performance by Matthew Cowan, took place at the top of Primrose Hill.





The disguised processioners circuited the summit of Primrose Hill, then walked off down the hill in single file.



Photos by Mat Webber

Hands and Knees after Crawl

I performed 'Crawl' on Saturday 29th May 2010. I crawled on my hands and knees around the lake of Alexandra Palace Park, which took one hour. It had been raining and the ground was cool and wet. At the end my palms were pink and chafed; my knees were also pink and studded with indentations where small stones had pressed through my worn-thin corduroy trousers into my flesh, some remaining embedded for a time. The dirt and detritus collected on my palms was washed away by the wetness of the clean smooth surface near the end of my crawl. My hands and knees returned to normal later that evening; a patch of eczema which appeared several weeks later on my knees has now disappeared. The clothes which I wore and muddied I have now cleaned.

You can read more about 'Crawl' here.





Photos by Tim F.

Crawl

On Saturday 29th May 2010 I performed 'Crawl' as part of 'Look Harder,' an exhibition of site specific and performance art at Alexandra Palace Park. ‘Look Harder’ was organised and curated by Tony Peakall and Judith Brocklehurst of Rekindle Arts, and included art work by Judith Brocklehurst, Tim Flitcroft, Calum F. Kerr, Miyuki Kasahara, Marco, Tony Peakall and Sarah Sparkes, amongst others. Art works and performance were situated in the vicinity of the lake in Alexandra Palace Park. (Click on Look Harder exhibition for more details of the exhibition). This was the second year that the exhibition had taken place; I also participated in the first exhibition, when I created a banner and performed three solo marches carrying it. (Click on over, banner, march, Alexandra Palace, protestation or tags in the sidebar for posts about the banner march and the first exhibition.)

Crawl was proposed as a counterpoint to a march; its antithesis. It was intended to embody a private world of defeat. I envisaged a temporary escape to a different world; different to our usual sensory experiences, to our ordinary measures of temporality, to notions of patience and endurance:

'I will crawl on my hands and knees, my face and fingers in the dust and dirt.  Crawling, I will exit the biped world, relinquishing verticality and the customary plane of society.  I will move slowly, perhaps painfully, aware of my body’s awkwardness.  Conscious of the detail, detritus and texture of my passage, the aromas and acoustics of movement close to the ground, I will crawl a complete circuit of the lake of Alexandra Palace Park. The antithesis of a march, the crawl will embody the private, the broken, the beaten, the small and the slow.'

The invitation to watch my crawl was also extended to visitors to the park who might wish to perform their own crawl; letters suggesting and inviting a crawl, addressed to ‘Dear Visitor,’ were left in the Lakeside Café. (View or download a Crawl letter here

Ruminating on my task to come, I made a short 'manifesto' style note to myself:

Crawl
Not a march
Antithesis/counterpoint to March
I cannot protest
I have nothing to protest about
I have no power, no agency
I have lost
I am beaten
But I must go on

The prospect of a long crawl – my intended route around the lake had taken me approximately ten or fifteen minutes at marching pace – required some preparation; I did not want to fail at my task, and it felt like a journey into unknown territory, however simple a proposition it might also seem. So after crawling around at home for several nights, learning about the new mode of mobility (or, rather, the very old mode) I decided to undertake a practice crawl in the outdoors. On Friday 28th May 2010 I went to Victoria Park, where I crawled for twelve minutes, from 2.12pm to 2.24pm, starting at the path on the left hand side of the Dogs of Alcibiades statue. I chose the path, which winds through the trees and grass and is surfaced with tarmac, to simulate the conditions in Alexandra Palace Park. On this occasion I was alone, without an audience or an exhibition context, simply a person, crawling. I noted the moment of transition from standing and walking into crawling, the decision to 'enter' the crawl, and felt it as a rupture. The first thing I noticed when I got down on my hands and knees was the temperature of the ground; it was warm to the touch, (though it would become cold later in the crawl.) There were ants and other 'busy-ness' happening on the ground. I was aware that I could not see people immediately around me or approaching close to me, my vision was obscured and altered at this low perspective. As I crawled I repeated to myself that it expresses the defeated, abject, beaten, irrelevant, ignored self. I was therefore particularly surprised that my actions actually garnered immediate and multiple notice, concern and intervention.

A man with a gold tooth approached from behind, where I had not noticed him until he was close, and called out:
'Excuse me, are you alright? Can I help?'
'It's ok,' I replied, 'I'm practicing for a performance.'
'Oh, I thought you might have lost something, thought you were looking for something.'
To him I had appeared to be searching; and a cause for concern.

A young man, amongst a group of other youths, shouted from a distance:
'Are you alright love?'
'Yes, thanks.'

A man in his forties, with a tiny dog, was suddenly visible. He veered from his path and walked over to me.
' 'Scuse me, are you alright mate? Is anything wrong?'
'No, I'm, practicing for a performance.'
'Ohhh...' (he laughed nervously.) 'I thought something was wrong...I thought I might have to call for an ambulance.'
'Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry you, sorry.'
'No, no, as long as you're alright mate. Well, I hope you get...what...you're getting for it! You deserve it!'
'Thanks!'

These people had obviously been watching for a while, unbeknownst to me.

Before the Crawl performance at Alexandra Palace I described my practice session to a friend. I mentioned my surprise at the concern that had been expressed about my behaviour, given the widely held idea that a person can lie dead in the street in London and people will simply step around them. My friend connected peoples' response to the particular history of Victoria Park, where in recent years a young woman out jogging had been murdered - perhaps that event has left people sensitive to perceived vulnerability, and willing to intervene. I thought too that my appearance, as a 'normally dressed' and not obviously mad, inebriated or unusual person, perhaps made my behaviour less classifiable or dismissable, and therefore I was both more approachable and more concerning.

The following is an account of my performance Crawl.


Beginning the Crawl; Alexandra Palace in the background


At 7pm I left the Lakeside Café, after a preparatory and fortifying cup of tea, and walked out towards the lake and the path which circles it. I turned to my right, dropped to the floor, and began to crawl on my hands and knees. I did not wear gloves or knee pads, and was clad in my everyday clothing, including my bag, the only concession to my new mode of movement being the old pair of trousers I wore, to preserve the knees of my better trousers which might be worse for wear if they underwent the journey. Unfortunately the fly zip of the old trousers was broken and coming loose, and the waist band a little tight, which made me self-conscious and awkward already. There had been rain on and off all day, and immediately before my performance, though it had ceased by the time I began. The ground was wet and cool to the touch. I noticed immediately that my hands became wet from the surface of the path, and the moisture then picked up small pieces of grit, twig, leaf and blossom, which pressed into my palms as I crawled and stuck there. I paused periodically to brush off the debris from my hands.

Voice and sound came from above, at a distance, disembodied. I was at the level of a small child, or a goose. At the early stages of my crawl I was accompanied by a flotilla of small children; I realised later from photographs that they were variously on foot, skateboard and scooter. At the time their voices and presence was vague. One small girl persistently questioned me in the first stretch of the path, crouching to interrogate: 'What are you? What animal are you?' I replied 'I'm a human being.' Dissatisfied with this answer she continued 'But what are you?' Then decided 'You're a tortoise, a slow tortoise.' I disengaged from the conversation and focussed on my crawl.


Girl questioning crawler


Crawling past boats


Girl crouches at crawler


Skateboarder and crawler

On the ground I saw mainly soggy blossoms, and molten green goose shit, in rivulets and clumps. I avoided this, placing my hands carefully, at first, though later I was too tired to do so. There were tiny twigs and specks of gravel, and other more unusual items of nature's detritus - blossoms like dragon's heads and miniature spheres, like little hard, green beads. I wanted to, and did, stop to move aside some of these items, handle them, or pause with them.


Hand hovering over the ground


Looking at twigs; brushing them aside



Picking bits of detritus from my palms

I had asked a friend to photograph the crawl. As I proceeded I was aware, at times, of his presence, by sound and peripheral vision. I had not wanted a photographer's presence to be obtrusive to viewers, to detract from the solitary act. But the quiet rustle and click of his presence was reassuring to me; I was glad of the companionship, of a kind, as in crawl position I was vulnerable and aware of my vulnerability. I could not see people behind me, nor easily turn round. And though I knew I was in the benign environs of a park, enveloped in an art private view, the longer I crawled, and the further from my start, the more I really entered into another realm of being. The loss of my usual auditory and visual clues for others' presence, the disruption to my customary visual plane and spatial relationship to the world, and its replacement with a new one (the assumption of slowness, discomfort, dirt, fragmentary vision, uncertainty, nearness of ground, downward vision, exclusion…), rendered me progressively more distant and alienated from my sense of my public everyday self, created a kind of disorientation and re-orientation. This re-placement of myself was not purely physical or spatial. Crawling took me further back, further away, absented me from normality; it connected me with something usually hidden as a biped, took me somewhere else in myself.


Being watched by group of people beside a tree




Crawling alone and with pigeon

My knees felt cold, wet, then numb. My trouser legs became damper, eventually flapping wetly against my ankles. The pressure was in the wrists, and not primarily upon the knees as I had expected. My shoulders, neck and arms ached. I tried various techniques to relieve the uncustomary points of pressure - modifying the short, careful crawl-steps into elongated ones by stretching my arms out further at each 'step' and allowing my knees to go further ahead with each movement, covering more ground; I tried just taking it slowly; at times I stretched my legs back to ease the stiffness; and towards the end I flexed my toes with each step to ease the cramps. But generally I just crawled slowly and carefully, taking as long as it took.


Pausing, kneeling, looking



Tipping whilst crawling


Crawling on fingertips


Crawler being photographed




Crawling amongst people

I noticed my breathing, which became slow and rhythmical, like yoga breathing. My breath felt like an assistance to the pain, and a source of energy. But also became simply part of a more basic kind of existence; just moving and breathing.

Part way round I started to crawl blind, crawling with my eyes closed. As I crawled I thought about why I was doing this, repeating almost mantra like 'the antithesis of a march, defined against it, embodying the small, private, broken, beaten...' I repeated these thoughts to myself, my stated intentions in the performance. And I inhabited the impulses that had led to its conception: my sense of the abject, the beaten, the broken, the defeated - in myself, in the world. I continued to crawl with eyes closed and a blankness of thought, with a sense of having given in to the crawl. I felt overwhelmed and found myself sobbing, crying, tears on my face escaping from closed eyes. I continued. I reflected that I was carrying on, I was continuing, no matter how hard or slow or painful, and I could continue, at my own pace too. I could no longer hear the clicking of the camera, but I thought my friend must still be there. When I opened my eyes I was alone. I thought my tears were unwitnessed, and wondered did this matter? I felt an uncertainty and ambiguity of where spectacle, performance, witness and my own experience overlapped and interrelated, uncertainty of what was necessary or present, and how. When I discussed the performance afterwards someone said it reminded him of yoga, of meditation, through which one can reach something higher. I thought maybe I reached something lower - something that in me is often close to the surface, but just held back; now it was present and embodied, but transfigured. In that moment of sobbing I realised the broken and beaten in me was also the strength and propulsion and freedom.







Crawling through the area with bushes I felt most alone and defeated, and also relinquished to the crawl




I crawled with my head down and eyes closed for some of the time



I was unaware, or only partially aware, of the people around me.


I did not see these boys, who veered away to avoid me



I crawled through the wooded area


When I had been crawling for some time I heard the voice of a woman walking beside me who said 'Does it hurt? More than it looks?' I replied 'Mmmm, yes' as best I could. 'You're nearly there, you're doing really well, ' she said. I continued, now thoroughly having had enough of it, and longing for the end point, at the completion of the circuit of the lake, back at the beginning. Suddenly I was eye level with a goose, and afraid of it. I detoured to avoid it, and others, but at this stage I was tired and slow and wimpering slightly at the soreness of my knees.

After one hour I arrived at the end, and rose to my feet.

Someone said to me afterwards that 'it makes you stronger, it takes strength.' I reflected that the pain of it felt like a release, escape, expression - expresion in the sense of letting out. A proof of endurance, of what one can take. Not to exaggerate: it was uncomfortable and painful certainly, but bearable, and with no lasting damage - a large red indentation in each knee, and red chafed palms were the only visible imprint - but something of the slowness and strangeness of the journey - the extreme slowness - perhaps took me on a journey beyond the parameters of the lake and the actual discomfort.

As I performed the crawl it felt such an internal, isolated and private experience that I thought its visual aspect might not convey how it felt being in it. The responses of some of the spectators, however, conveyed that the performance had, for them, tallied with my own experience. In the preparation crawl in Victoria Park, the men’s recognition and expressed concern of my being outside the norm, the wrongness and vulnerability of my actions pointed to the severing I felt with the normal world. And after the actual performance in Alexandra Palace one person described it as 'a spectacle of suffering', catching the state I had entered into in executing the crawl, but also the difficulty of watching such a performance. I assumed that being expected to watch/enjoy the ‘spectacle’ passively, and not to intervene, was perhaps compromising. Other people told me that in Mexico and France people undertake something similar, as a kind of prayer, or to obtain something they need. I felt no such sense of a system of redemption or beneficent power that my crawl could activate, but it seems there are many ways to crawl and meanings thereof.

*Note. About three weeks after the crawl I found I had itchy knees and acquired a small red patch of eczema on each knee cap. Perhaps a manifest memory or memento of the Crawl.

All Photos are by Marco.


Review of Look Harder in the Hornsey Journal



Review in Ham and High