Read my essay on the Running Artfully Network http://fermynwoods.org/running-across-urgent-terrains/
Preceding the 2021 Running Artfully Network launch event I had two dreams; my dead father (who said he didn’t know how to run) running at speed up and down a Snowdonia mountainside in his work suit, and myself running across the fields, out of breath and exhilarated, waking to remember the hip injury that has kept me from running this past year. Jostling alongside these more personal reflections my attention was turned towards the curious circumambulations of people I have observed over lockdowns, running like crazy. People who maybe have never run before, older people, teenagers, children with their parents, running with a ‘get out of the house’ urgency akin to mania. I decided that there was an absurdity to this physiological tenacity in running that I found very exciting and wondered why I had almost kept my own running a ‘secret’ or at least separate from my art practice. I have made work and written about walking for a long time and have also always run – but initially, perhaps as the running bit was for my health and self care – it didn’t figure in the work.
People I knew when I was growing up didn’t run, at least I never saw anyone. For my father, the son of a Polish immigrant and coal-miner, such things were seen as a waste of time and energy. My family and their friends were walkers and climbers, these activities were thought of as synonymous with the wholistic/creative lives they aspired to in a way that running or jogging was not.
This snobbery about running has been followed through for decades in ‘walking arts’, and in academic communities is epitomised perhaps in the ‘jogging debate’ in France. Sarkozy and his regular jogs (with full bodyguard entourage), while often wearing his NYPD T shirt, infuriated those who resented both his political closeness to America and it’s indulgent neo-liberal attentions to the body…Read more
Image Credit, Run for your Life.