Last month I took part in an event ‘Artistes — Porter une question: juillet 2021’, a kind of walking art, which was organized by a team of inspired people in Canada. That event was related to ‘Marcher en portant une question / Walking with a Question’ taking part in Prespes, Greece, https://icowaf.eetf.uowm.gr/ . In brief, participants were asked to catch artistic ideas and proceed to actions while walking, In that way, lot of people felt connected with the place they were walking, the environmental concerns or the community needs of that place,
The teammate
I was lucky having Ms. Andrée Martin as a teammate, who is an Arts professor at UQAM | Université du Québec à Montréal . She was working on several walking art projects in parallel, so she had an good experience on that. Apart from approaching the theme in a brilliant way, she also had the willingness to connect and discuss about the concept; we discussed about the nature, the climate change, but also the way indigenous populations were connected to nature;
Andree was very concerned about the recent news in Canada regarding the deaths of hundreds of children at government-funded boarding schools, as part of policy to attempt to assimilate Indigenous children and destroy Indigenous cultures and languages. She also described me the close connection those people had with nature, the respect they showed toward it, but also their kind of walking art. Also, she was concerned about the nature because has started observing changes in the climate in her area.
Thoughts and emotions
In the meantime, I had started identifying changes in the climate of my country, Greece; this subject became even more important after the recent disastrous fires in Greece, the broader Mediterranean area, but also around the world.
In order to participate in the aforementioned event about walking art, I started walking in nature and observing; I preferred areas close to the sea, since they are my favorite ones. While doing that, I remembered ‘Chasing Mavericks’ a 2012 American biographical drama film about the life of American surfer Jay Moriarity; his tutor asked him to observe the write down his findings ‘The power of observation’– in that way, he became an exceptional surfer and cultivated his personality. Well yes, through that process, I exercised how to focus and think and that helped me connect with nature, but also myself.
While I was under that process, one day I saw a poem somewhere;
“”
I come from the water…
Boats in my blood…
Salt in my veins….
“”
Some words of that poem stayed in my mind… After some days, I realized that a pattern of the photos I was taking during my walks reminded me of Hands. So, I thought that in a way we are Earth and those are Nature’s Hands.
We Are Earth.
In this article you can see part of my walking art work during that project. I’m hoping for a better future for our planet and a conscious living for us.