Walk to Listen / Listen to Walk
Today
Cities are becoming larger, more dispersed and fragmented. More and more people stop living the whole, they live in confined spaces and look the rest of the city as something strange.
We live in cities where the capitalist system designed them for their own convenience. An example of this is the mobility; According to capitalism, a city well designed is that which gives priority to the circulation through the car, and forget on many occasions of designing cities so that also they can circulate through the bike and walking.
We live in cities that are designed without thinking about the encounter of the people as something important, no spaces are created so that people will meet, stays and dialog, which leads to damage of the perception that people have of the world, limiting their knowledge and act in our societies.
Listen an Walking
Listen and walk are acts with which we come into contact with the world, they help to make sense, understand and share it with others. They may be actions able to describe and modify spaces that are crossed.
The mere physical presence of people man in a space “constitute a form of transformation of the landscape that, without leaving visible signs, culturally modifies the meaning of space and therefore the space itself.” (Careri, 2002)
Both listening and walking are political and social acts, vehicles of communication, dialogue, understanding and approach to people, an indispensable means of understanding and transformation of our realities.
We can listen and walk to stop producing, to consume, to leave the urgency and stress, to meet us, to know us – to ourselves and to other people- and so listen to us and walk together.
They may be acts capable of strengthen our relations, to put resistance against the fear, violence and repression. Walk together (in a march, demonstration or walk) it can be considered an appropriation of public space and life itself.
In the current economic, political and social context, listen and walk can be seen as acts of resistance and rebellion against the capitalist
system, because they slow down the hurried pace of our lives, invites us to stop us, to talk and get to know us, to think about us, our relationships and our societies.
“Where sound, body and space meet, new dimensions of, and sensitivities towards, environments can be engaged, and our relationship to these and to ourselves and each other within these can be re-imagined and transformed.” (Ouzounian, 2006).
The everyday
Many actions such as dancing, reading, go out and party, stopping to listen, walking aimlessly, among others, can be very everyday actions, however, everyday life is part of our way of being, is where we recognize ourselves, and so, it can be considered that in everyday life we can put resistance to the prevailing economic and political system, because that is where we may generate actions that are not completely subjugated to the capitalist logic.
Actions
There will be actions in which walking and listening there will be made different routes, and sound recordings and / or writings of these will be done.
Action no.1 took place in the downtown of Queretaro, Mexico, I walked the same route again and again for an hour, at the same time that was done the sound recording of each tour, which began in the Garden Zenea and continued by the streets 16 de Septiembre, Allende Norte, the walker Francisco I. Madero and ended again in the Garden Zenea. This action took place on Friday 2, October, 2015, between 19:18 and 20:18 hrs.
Action no.2 available at LEA.