Written Landscapes

Long, Elisabeth

doi:10.1525/aft.2007.34.6.26

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“…walk and to reveal the close attention to detail that results from treading the same path over and over'. 39 In an earlier version of this work, Fulton organised the list as a single block of text. 40 There, the visual impact is arguably more akin to viewing a landscape painting; the eye is drawn to the contours of the lettering, the undulations formed by the language, the transitions within the dusk-like monochromatic block.…”

Section: Fulton: Walking and Walk-textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sensuous Singularity’: Hamish Fulton’s Cairngorm Walk-Texts

Macpherson¹

2017

Critical Survey

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The purpose of this article is to consider walking artist Hamish Fulton's 'walk-texts' as ethical responses to the environment. In light of the environmental crisis that manifests in the proposed stratigraphic designation 'Anthropocene', Jane Bennett's writing on enchantment offers a direction for thinking about how an ecologically ethical sensibility might be cultivated. Fulton's communicative response to his walking art, I argue, embodies the discernment of 'things in their sensuous singularity' that Bennett identifies as a key attribute of enchantment. Yet, in his own writing on his art practice, the walk-texts are conceived as secondarya necessary counterpart to walking as an experiential activity. By honing in on two recurring strategies we find in Fulton's Cairngorm walk-textsthe list and the return-I argue that his work offers a linguistic mode that holds great potential for tuning us to environmental ethics in the Anthropocene. Keywords: Anthropocene, ecology, ethics, Hamish Fulton, Jane Bennett, sensuous singularity Starting Points Since the early 1970s, Hamish Fulton has been combining two distinct activities: walking and art. Rejecting art-historical discourse that has labelled him variously as a conceptual artist, a sculptor and a Land artist, Fulton refers to himself simply as a walking artist: 'Every piece of art I make results from the experiences of specific walks-Every walk I make is recorded in words'. 1 The act of walking is where Fulton's art happens; the 1 documentation of the walks, in 'walk-texts' and photographs, records, in his own words, only the presence of a human experience. Yet, as his page on the British Council website maintains, 'the communicative power [of his work] comes from the resonant texts which accompany [it]'. 2 These texts range from simple declarations of intent detailing the duration, date and location of a walk, to concrete poetry, haiku-style descriptions, and combinations of word and image that draw influence from advertising and graphic design. Often repeated in different contextsfrom gallery walls to artist books and postcardsas well as with variations in form, Fulton's walk-texts display a conscious engagement with language, typography, punctuation and the interplay of words and images. In this article, I focus on a selection of the walk-texts produced as a result of Fulton's walks in the Cairngorms. Fulton has returned to the Cairngorms, Am Monadh Ruadh, or the red hill range, in northeast Scotland repeatedly since his first walk there in 1985, and has produced dozens of walk-texts documenting his experiences. Many of these are collected in two volumes, Mountain Time Human Time (2010), a book resulting from a project with Deveron Arts, a socially engaged arts organisation based in the small Aberdeenshire town of Huntly, and Wild Life (2000), a collection of Cairngorm texts produced between 1985 and 1999. 3 Spanning twenty-five years, Fulton's Cairngorm work expresses an intense attachment to and fascination with place that is representative of his w...

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Section: Fulton: Walking and Walk-textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sensuous Singularity’: Hamish Fulton’s Cairngorm Walk-Texts

Macpherson¹

2017

Critical Survey

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show abstract

Written Landscapes

Cited by 1 publication

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‘Sensuous Singularity’: Hamish Fulton’s Cairngorm Walk-Texts

‘Sensuous Singularity’: Hamish Fulton’s Cairngorm Walk-Texts

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