Musicological Topic with Performance and Production_ Walking & Sound: Performances, Cultural History & Artistic Concepts

Exploring a given environment by walking is at the same time trivial and exotic. 

The long cultural history of walking practices and reflections on the effects and the practices of walking have inspired writers, philosophers, artists, performers and theorists. Walking is no longer such an unreflective practice as one might assume; it is now an artistic, sonic and sensory research practice that has been developed and refined by many researchers, artists and musicians over the last few decades. 

This course focuses on sound and the performativity of walking, hearing, listening and sounding. Together, we will explore the practical and theoretical aspects of this practice. Therefore, this course combines critical reading with performance practice. 
 

The course consists of two parts each week.

- on Tuesdays, we will discuss and try to understand some of the most important texts on walking. These range from artistic programmes, such as Westerkamp’s Sound Walking from 1974, to aesthetic approaches, such as Evans (2012), and cultural theories around walking, mobile perception, and ubiquitous listening, such as Kassabian (2013).

- on Thursdays, you will guide us through a specific designed walk in an area of Copenhagen, giving the rest of us an opportunity to experience the area, the situation and the moment through our senses, body and kinaesthetic perception.

Walking is in this course not exclusively a subject of scholarly discussion. 

First and foremost it is a means of presenting and making an argument through the senses in a given situation. 

Therefore, your exam performance will also be a walk: as a concept, an audiovisual recording, an outline, a discussion topic).