Constitutional is a dialogue project begun in February 2007.
It takes as its medium the walk, or, more specifically, the walk with friends. A walk is incomplete like a conversation – we walk every day, and each walk is a fragment of the whole walk that takes up our whole lives. Where can this walk today end, if not at the start of the next walk we begin? In a similarly fragmented way, each conversation we take part in is not bounded by the first and last phrase, the hello and goodbye, but instead is influenced by the previous conversations we have had and feeds into the next. Even if it were possible to change our subject matter for every conversation we ever had, the experience of our previous conversations makes us different conversationalists.
All of this is pretty self evident, and rather uncontentious.
Each walk is a unique activity – each walk takes place across places with a forceful indication of time and space; we move as we walk, physically exploring and expanding our horizons and experiences. We end up somewhere after a walk, somewhen different from the start, even if our walk is a circuit. Similarly, each conversation has a beginning and end, leading us from different points of view and experiences to some newly created joint collaboration, a mergence of opinion and fact, altered or greater knowledge than we had before.
All of this is pretty self evident, and rather uncontentious.
Both a walk and a conversation have another common effect – they each constitute. What is a constitution? It is the healthy functioning of the body; aided by a constitutional. It is an agreed list of rights that cannot be overridden by any Parliament – a protection of the individual body from the body politic. It is a process by which separate things are brought together and made into a larger body – an increase in size, scale, importance. A group of friends are constituted as such through the activity of talking or walking, of hanging out, of getting to know.
Neither the group, the conversation or the walk are ever complete. The walk and the talk and the group are processes, a practice that makes something happen without creating something individual or discreet. It has created a part of a limitless activity, an object without any corporeal existence. A walk is only happening when you are engaged in the activity of the walk; when you stop, you are not a walker.
Constitutional will be beginning in February 2007 with up to four invited guests taking part in each walk. It forms part of my ongoing research into what can be construed an artwork in contemporary society and how these can be created without the manufacture of objects; objecthood; liveness; a focus on the individual person at the expense of communicating with a mass of people.
More information on Constitutional is at the Constitutional project website.
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