A website for one shoe

In 2004, The Ministry of Walking rose out of the dust and snow in the conspicuously automobile-centric Calgary, where a group of artists were determined to undermine the car culture and find some cracks and crevices of pleasure/growth in the concrete of the streets. The website was started as a way for members to document the ideas that the group developed through walking.The project hopes to entice commuting Calgarian suburbanites, as well as people in other cities, to take on the slowed-down pleasures of urban exploration on foot.

When asked to write something about MOW’s website, I have to admit, I was a bit afraid it would be a set of highly developed plans to enliven the city and empower the populace with maps for a dérive. Happily I found the website was more of an unfinished master plan with only a few links and a downloadable Wander Guide. It comes across as though everyone from the Ministry is off somewhere else and not tied to the computer designing webpages that explain what one might find “out there.” After quickly coming to the ends of each of the pages in the MOW website, I decide to follow the links to the members. From one of them I come to this end:

Writing this now, I attempt to return to the link from which I stumbled on this text/graphic, to quote exactly which member lead me here, but nothing navigates me towards this page any more! I ask myself if the MOW website has been updated or if I had a unique experience? Luckily, I have proof of that journey because at the time I was struck by the absurdity of it and did a screen grab. Knowing this link has been lost to us now, I feel luckier than before somehow. MOW member Donna Akrey explains that the website is pretty much just one shoe. “You need to go find or already have the other shoe somewhere to make it work for you.”

Armed with MOW’s downloadable Wander Guide, “our latest tool in ongoing efforts to develop a meandering urban public (MUP),” I proceed with my research by deciding to take two actions: do a walk as proposed by MOW in each of the five cities I would be passing through in the coming weeks; and wander as a member of the MUP through my stacks and the internet in reaction to MOW’s scant website and what it proposes. 

Of the eight suggested walks in the Wander Guide I am particularly drawn to two. The Seeking Silence Excursion recommends we “notice the change in sound throughout the transition between locations”; Stack Maneuver is more of a disruptive, blind negotiation of an urban center at lunchtime, where one is told to carry a stack of empty boxes in front of them. The second of the two makes me think of Samuel Beckett’s stage piece “Quad” where four people continuously navigate a square, never bumping into each other even though they are possessed by haste and their own routine. I go YouTubing to find it and am mesmerized by “Quad” but it makes me think of how my planned travels would also include train, plane, ferry, and shuttle bus. I speculate as to whether I can approach my walks in these terminals in the same MUP way? What constitutes an appropriate site for a walk?

from “City on a Roof – Rules of the Game” a non-copyrighted box-set catalogue of architects' reflection on urban development, during a conference in Groningen, Netherlands, 2006.

Jonas Mekas comes to mind for his reflections on tourists in the city. On Tuesday December 4, 2007, of his series entitled 365 Mekas tells us, “(The) tourist is a perfect example of someone who has reached a zen state of life. It does not matter what kind of food, good or bad, it does not matter, you just eat anything. And you don’t care what will happen to you, you know, so what? You are in a bliss of existence and nothing really matters, including yourself.” I suspect that Mekas’s tourist is already well underway to being a MUP although one is not supposed to want to be a tourist. According to the MOW Wander Guide however, locals can be guilty of the “Point-A-to-B” Syndrome, which is said to cause symptoms such as melancholy, alienation and fatigue and for this reason I decide to ask Corey Frost to go on assignment, and walk over to the Zebulon in Brooklyn, and drop off a copy of “Dwelling for Intervals” for Jonas Mekas. I send JM an email to tell him of the delivery (maybe he too will walk).

I decide to ask MOW members to answer a few questions about the origin of The Ministry of Walking and their role in it. From their varied answers I find discrepancy about exactly when it all began and who was involved. Members are apologetic for the out-of-date state of the website; emphatic about it having no connection to the Ministry of Silly Walks (a Monty Python skit); and several tell me they are suffering from foot ailments but are still walking, albeit with different shoes. Most members continue “the walk” as part of their everyday and artistic practice but proof of this is on their individual websites and blogs rather than back at The Ministry. I want to reassure them that they are really doing enough, but it's too late as suddenly I am privy to a slew of group emails among the members promising each other more shows, auctions, actions, interactions … in short, more paths.

Jorge Luis Borges from “Labyrinths” 1964.

I ask the members of MOW if maps and games are related. Kay Burns answered:

“They can be I suppose, but I would have to say I haven’t experienced any map-related games that enhance my experience of a place in any kind of profound way. Having said that, I think the idea of maps as some kind of “truthful representation” of place is maybe rather game like — in terms of possible deceptions, exaggerations, and disjointedness. Don’t forget, maps spelled backwards is spam – think about what that means!

The five cities and the results of my research are as follows:

Rotterdam — I want to follow the shifting bricks and sand of the mammoth construction projects of the inner-city but instead I am struck by the revolving doors on all corners of every intersection.

Amsterdam — I (happily) find myself lost again — inadvertently on MOW’s Spiral Walk.

New York — With an almost-fifty-year-old dandy and a twin, we give up all recommendations and are absorbed by that elusive other and bridges, simultaneously shooting from three different heights.

Toronto — My travel suitcase drags behind me like a reluctant dog, the streets stretch in front of me like a lapping tongue. Sunshine and a stiff shoulder.

Montreal — Old haunt new ghosts. I buy some new shoes in Little Italy. Day does too.

Two weeks later, back in Rotterdam, Iva Bittova from the Czech Republic is in town performing. I have just bought a ticket when she arrives with her violin in a backpack. She asks at the kiosk where she will be performing and then turns and compliments me on my new shoes. I want to give her one.

What works so well about the MOW website is that it doesn’t really give much. This open project draws you to the ends of a few short routes on the website, only to shove you off with no obligation to call home or check in later. It is a collection of loose beginnings, as though the members met there to discuss how to start and then left the page/site, to be engrossed in their own urban undertakings. Having departed from the original directives so many years ago, a few members lovingly send a postcard home from time to time (a video or still image with some text). The rest happens off the page, underfoot, in our heads, and in the collaborative spaces between.

From Christopher Dewdney’s “Spring Trances in the Control Emerald Night” 1974.