Walk Manuals

Backwards Walk:
Walk backwards for fifteen minutes through the city.

Balance Walk (Leaning Duets by Trisha Brown):
Find a partner, join hands and maintain a balance by tilting away from the other in an angle, composing a V, while the edges of your feet meet in the center. Take tentative steps in the same direction.

Barefoot Walk:
In the middle of winter, with ice or snow on the ground, find a place in public a few hundred meters from a warm inside environment. Take your shoes off. Walk until you start losing the feeling of your connection to the earth, then walk inside. Have towels and mildly warm water waiting for your feet.

Blind Walk:
Start in a place that is unfamiliar. One person is blindfold; one person guides. Start walking. The blindfolded person tries to make a loop back to where you started walking.

Blind Walk (Variation I):
Work as a team of two: one person is blindfolded; one person wears earplugs. Start walking, one guiding by sound, one by sight.

Diagonal Walk:
In a public space, walk only diagonal lines to get to a place 1km away.

Ever Walking Walk:
Pick a place across the city. Make your way, use public transportation to get there if you want. Do not stop walking no matter where you are – in the subway, while waiting etc – until you arrive.

Estimation Sound Walk:
In groups of two to five people, ask one person to stand still and close their eyes. Ask the others to stand next to the person with their eyes closed. Ask them to say here. Counting their footsteps, ask them to walk some distance away from the person standing still with their eyes closed, and then to stop. Ask them to say here again. Note, the person saying here should say the word with the same volume as they said it the first time. Have the person with their eyes closed guess how far away they have gone and to point to where they are.

Estimation Walk (Variation I):
Define a distance of 100m. The group starts walking, everyone walks in the same direction and stops after what they think is 100m.

Estimation Walk (Variation II)
Pick something around you and guess how many footsteps it would take between where you are standing and that thing. Walk that number of footsteps to that thing. Keep doing this for some time.

Estimation Walk (Time Your Space):
Define a distance (300m; to the tree over there). Establish a slightly unreasonable amount of time to walk there (3 min; 30 minutes). Walk without stopping. Do now look at a watch as you walk. Try to arrive on time.

Extended Body Walk:
Make a simple prosthetic device (out of cardboard) to fit onto a particular part of your body. Attach the device. Set a destination relatively far away from where you start. Walk there.

Fukashi Walk:
Pick a word or characters which has some significance to you. With a group of people, try to walk those letters or characters in a large scale and in a public space. Walk those letters or word over and over until you become the word you make.

Lay Down Line Walk:
With a group of people, lay down in a long line, head to toe, in a public space. Starting at the head of the line, ask the last person to stand up and run or walk to the other end of the line and lay down. Ask the new last person to stand up and walk or run to the end of the line. Repeat this with each end until everyone has walked or run at least three times.

Map Walk:
Copy a map from another city. Use that map to find your way across the city you are currently in. Referring to the map, ask strangers where you are and to help you find the place you need to find.

Measure Walk:
In public space, pick something at eye level or below, that is within easy walking distance. Estimate the size of that thing using your fingers and arms. Hold that measurement with your fingers or arms and walk to that thing. Keep doing this for some time.

Net Walk:
With a group of people, ask everyone to extend their arms out at full length. Ask everyone to space themselves so that their fingertips are just barely touching the fingertips of the people next to them. Trying to maintain this distance, walk through the city for ten minutes.

Periphery Walk:
Put your hands out to your side until you see your hands disappear. Keeping your hands at the boundary of your peripheral view, and keeping your head pointed straight while focused on your sides, walk through a part of the city.

See Walk:
With a route in mind, use a mirror to orient yourself in reflected space. Walk the route by looking into the mirror to see where you are going.

See Walk (Variation I):
Work in teams of two or three: Use a mirror to orient yourself in reflected space. Walk the route by looking into the mirror ot the other person to see where you are going.

See Walk, Double Reflection (A Two-Person Variation):
As performed in See Walk, use a mirror to reflect on where you are going. In the two-person variation, find where you are going using someone else’s reflection. Self-organize a choreography of slowness and seeing so that each person is simultaneously holding the other person’s way of seeing, where you are looking, where you are going, and how you get there together.

Silent Walk: With a group or alone, walk through part of a city without speaking for at least 30 minutes. While walking, give continuous and focused attention to the loudest sound you hear around you by looking in every direction in which you hear something.Slope Walk:
Start on the top of a slope. Look down the slope trying to see it as level. Walk down the slope as if the slope is level.

Slope Walk (Variation I):
Start on the top of a slope. Walk backwards down the slope.

Slope Walk (Variation II):
Start on the bottom of the slope. Look up the slope trying to see it as level. Walk up the slope as if the slope is level.

Slope Walk (Variation III):
Close your eyes while walking up or down a slope. Imagine there is no slope.

Slope Walk (Variation IV):
Find a slope. Walk perpendicular to that slope.

Slow Walk:
As a group, walk very ,very, very slowly for 15 minutes in public. Feel your weight on the ground. Feel your balance shift. Feel each part of the slow motion as it is distributed though your entire body. Don’t forget to breathe.

Slow Walk (Variation I):
Walk very very very very slowly with a group of people walking very very very very very slowly.

Slow Walk (Variation II):
Walk very very very very slowly.

Smell Walk:
Start some distance from where you need to go. Find your way by hitchhiking on different smells you encounter. If you lose one smell, ride on another until you arrive. Allow detours.

Sound Walk (Circle):
Start standing in a circle in a public space. Walk away from each other along different radii while saying “hello” to the people standing across from you. Keep walking your radius and screaming hello until you can no longer hear a “hello” from anyone in your circle saying hello. Walk back to the center saying hello.

Sound Walk (Line):
Line up a group of people. Saying the word ‘hello’ to the person on both sides of you, stretch the line by increasing the volume of your “hello” as you move away from each other. See how far you can walk in audible range of “hellos” on both sides of you. If the line breaks, move closer to the last “hello”. (Find a way to see and measure the whole sound line.)

Straight Walk:
Starting as a group in public space, each person picks a thing at some distance away. Try to walk in a straight line to that thing and back.

Take a Stand Walk:
Sit down while traveling on a form of public transportation. At some moment on the way, take off your shoes. Stand up in the place you are asked to sit. Keep standing there for some time while just being yourself.

Your Attention Span Walk:
On your way to somewhere else, focus on something around you. Look only at that thing. Think about nothing other than that thing. Let all other thoughts pass through you. When you arrive at that thing, pick another thing to focus on. Keep doing this over and over for some time.

Please send documentation of your walks to the Institut für Raumexperimente:

institut (at) raumexperimente.net