Christine Mühlberger | works
Leicht
Leicht - ein Panorama, Bilder des Gehens
On 24 July 2014, I started the fourth of my “feet journeys”, which have brought me in all Cardinal directions through Europe in recent years.
From my house door in Zurich, I walked in thirty day towards the Bassin d'Archacon, on the Atlantic coast of France.
Just as I have travelled to Genoa (2011, 700 km), Graz (2012, 900 km) and Hamburg (2013, 1200 km), this walk has been intense, made out of stages of 40 to 50 km a day. On the road with a light backpack and no other aim than to walk.
What kind of anachronism brings me to walk long distances by foot, all on my own, in a world in which it is deemed better to be in line with technology in order to be fast and have possessions, in a time in which there is nothing else than money?
Why do I choose the loneliest paths, if possible in the most untouched of places?
Why at last these high demands towards my body that I subject to these long and nonstop marches?
Because walking is the most human and natural art and way to move ourselves.
Because everything comes closer and becomes more graspable through walking.
Because the body, through the act of walking, comes into resonance with what surrounds it, because walking is something organic, close to nature.
Because walking is this time which gets closer to fundamentals, the clouds in the sky, the earth, the stones, the mountains and the water on the ground.
Because walking requires attention, openness, freedom and trust.
Because walking makes you light.
Walking as a performance, in the sense of an aesthetic expression.
The present documentation displays works that come from this work-in-progress. It has come into being on the one hand through an artistic reflection in which the themes of time, the flow of time, nature and the human body are at the foreground. On the other hand, it also exists through my long-standing experience as a long-distance walker. It relates performance to image-making. The performances, these intense walks on foot that last over several weeks take place in silence, in the private sphere. The photographs which I take during these walks function as starting points for pictures which are made available to the public sphere. An exchange of the inside towards the outside, of the outside towards the inside.