Jul 31, 2011 | July 28th – 31st, The Midpoint Mash-up: Friday, July 29th, 7:30-9:30pm at McCormick Park, 26200 NE Stephens Street, Duvall, WA
Various Locations Around King County
45+ miles, King County Regional Trails System, Puget Sound to Snoqualmie Falls, WA
Susan Robb
The Long Walk, 2011: A Pedestrian Adventure
4Culture and the King County Parks and Recreation Division are pleased to present The Long Walk, 2011. Reservations for this free, time-based, “open-source”, and socially engaged art event opened to the public on June 6th and filled in less than five hours.
Seattle artist Susan Robb and these fifty participants will walk the Regional Trails System (RTS) over the course of four days - July 28th through 31st - from Golden Gardens Park in Seattle to Snoqualmie Falls. Along the route they will experience the landscape of King County in a unique way, camp in unusual locations like Sandpoint Magnuson’s Hangar 30 and Tolt MacDonald Park, celebrate with a formal dinner prepared by chef Matt Dillon of Sitka and Spruce, and engage with interactive artworks commissioned from, among others, San Francisco-based Abe Burickson, New York-based Todd Shalom, the Seattle Experimental Animation Team, and Seattle-based Sarah Kavage.
Originally put into motion as part of 4Culture’s Trails Project, The Long Walk requires self reliance and mutual aid. Robb explains:
“This socially engaged work places those involved in an essentially human situation, one where walking and talking effortlessly claim their positions as fundamental sources of connection. As participants walk in an organically shifting line down the trail, strangers meet and friends deepen their knowledge of each other. Maybe it’s the passing landscape that allows just enough input, or that somehow, in looking around at our surroundings, we relax and open up. Perhaps the rhythm of our bodies synchs with some kind of cognitive function? I don’t have the answer, but the simple act of walking over an extended period of time grabs hold of a primordial space inside us and something autonomous, authentic, and exciting happens.”
Opportunities for Public Engagement
The Midpoint Mash-up: The public is invited to join up with the group of trail trampers on Friday, July 29th from 7:30-9:30pm at McCormick Park in Duvall for an evening of place-based sound broadcast by the Seattle Phonographers Union, a cappella enchantment by The Bicycle Choir, grass braiding with Sarah Kavage, and a participatory “play the environment” exercise lead by Todd Shalom.
The public can also follow the journey and engage via Twitter (@susan_robb [#tlwsr]) and Facebook (The Long Walk Seattle).
More information about The Long Walk can be found at www.thelongwalkseattle.com.
To request images/video from last year’s event, or to schedule an interview with artist Susan Robb, please contact Sara.Edwards@4Culture.org / 206.296.8677
Susan Robb's sculptures and built environments transform common objects into ideological hybrids of flesh, nature, and technology. Drawing on empirical observation, reflection, and imagination about her immediate surroundings and contemporary social issues, these hybridizations are open-ended investigations into the kaleidoscopic intersection of culture and nature, speaking of the intelligence of nature and dynamic systems.
