Blog 6
My draft essay introduction:
As part of preparation for the 4,000-word essay about our own art practice and the work of two other artists, we had to send a 200-word introduction to our tutor about our chosen topic. We are then going to expand on this next semester when we start working on the essay in more depth. This is my draft attempt, explaining my idea.
“This essay is going to discuss running as an art source in relation to mapping, data and the landscape and how the practices like drawing and GPS data can showcase the physical. I am a runner and an artist trying to further the discourse between the two fields. My aim is not to put forward that running itself is art, more discussing the artistic practice that can use the run as a source material.
The topics relate to the established practices of walking art, land art, embodied art, data art, mapping as art and expanded drawing.My theme touches on the current discourse between digital and analogue ways of recording data and the over commodification of the landscape and the body. Notably the modern oversaturation of data, the human effects on the landscape, the fact we can’t have an experience without documenting it, and challenging the romantics view of landscape as pleasure.
The aim of this essay is helping people realise that even though running may not always be artistic, you can create art from the traces and use your movement as a paint brush in the world. The purpose is to contrast the more digital, removed and science esque data extraction to the more primal physical relationship with the land and environment and the physical artistic translation of the run in my artwork.
In terms of artists featured, Hamish Fulton is one of the pioneering walking artists, who I include as his work is all about using the walk as a source for his art. Michael Craig Martin is an artist who is known for his drawing and I am discussing his work in relation to my aesthetic and artistic choices of how I document my runs, with a lot of minimalist line drawing. My own art is then a combination of the two themes and aesthetics into a new genre of art from running.”