In this article I focus on the experience of slow walking in selected outdoor (and indoor) public locations as a part of an ongoing artistic study. A series of slow walks function as corporeal acts towards meaning making by a dancer-researcher in the framework of a phenomenological approach. In the act of slow walking and standing the notion of appearance and disappearance is discussed in relation to the ‘I’, in detachment and passivity, and how this perspective challenges the previous habitual ways of being. The writings of Simone Weil, particularly her concept of the de-creation of the ‘I’, are discussed with these experiences of walking and standing. The walks happen simultaneously with the writing: the walking continues its echoes in the body of the dancer-researcher as she writes. The flux between holding and releasing, uncertainty, and nothingness run through the article, though the respect towards the hidden nature of corporeal knowledge, non-knowledge, exists. The lived experience of the walks form the method, as well as the results; and the method of vulnerability shows the possibilities of communication with people and environments through one’s corporeality so that readers can have the benefit of discovering all that is embedded in artistic studies.

Kirsi Heimonen, DA (Dance) is an artist-researcher currently acting as a university researcher at the Centre for Artistic Research (CfAR) at the University of the Arts, in Helsinki, Finland. In her artistic research during recent years, she has been intrigued by the issues of slowness, silence and insanity. She is a certified teacher of the Skinner Releasing Technique, a somatic practice that has heavily influenced her artistic research.

A corridor, the narrow area that leads to or from somewhere, a passageway that is situated in between exits or entrances and that connects rooms, is often a waiting room for appointments, such as for a doctor. It leads to the main space and what that space offers or requires. It can also become a meeting place, a space in which to encounter something new, as its in-betweenness suggests. In addition, a corridor has a unique character of its own.In our research data, Finnish writers describe their memories of different mental hospitals in Finland from the 1930s until the 2010s. In the mental hospital context, the corridor creates the first impression of the institution: anxiety, uncertainty, or relief are all experienced by patients by walking through it. When one is not allowed to leave, walking or strolling indoors is only possible in the hospital corridors. When one is taken to isolation rooms or treatments via corridors, one has time to prepare oneself -to become more terrified or calmer or to experience any of the feelings in between.The sound of steps in a corridor informs the hearer about the person in it, about the speed of gait, the material the walker's shoes are made of, and the way in which the walker places each foot on the floor. The form and spatiality of a corridor triggers memories of running, e.g. oneself as a child, through corridors elsewhere.People move along, pause and wait in corridors. Everything moves, including the corridor, since it contracts in length, even if only very slowly. The notion of change, how people, materialities, and objects are constantly in motion, makes research and writing about this topic challenging. However, the impermanent nature of movement and what can be shared and conveyed through art can be viewed as an opportunity.

She focuses her research on critical artistic and arts-based practices and research in questions of diversity, disability studies, social justice and critical animal studies. She is a World Councilor of InSEA (International Society for Education Through Art), the founder of the International Disability Studies, Arts and Education (DSAE) conference, and the founder of Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA) master's program. She is the author and editor of six books, and editor of journals Research in Arts and Education (principle editor) and The International Journal of Education through Art (editor).Heidi Fast is an artist-researcher and singer with MA in live art and performance studies. Fast is currently finalizing her artistic doctoral research on the transformational potential of non-verbal affective communication, in Aalto University. Fast works in a multidisciplinary research project, called "Experiential Demarcation: Multidisciplinary Inquiries into the Affective Foundations of Interaction" (led by J. Taipale, University of Jyväskylä). Her doctoral research is actualized in co-operation with Helsinki University Central Hospital of Psychiatry. The themes of Fast´s artistic research are imminently connected with art working, that involves wide projects and series of artworks, such as Hospital Symphonies (2015-2019), which was actualized to the hospital space, concert hall and radio.

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