The Walking Seminar Embodied research in emergent Anthropocene landscapes - Christian Ernsten
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Nick Shepherd
Christian Ernsten
Dirk-Jan Visser
The Walking
Seminar
Embodied research
in emergent Anthropocene
landscapes
“Walking is the speed for “According to a German
noticing – and for thinking. proverb, ‘you think with
The Table Mountain Walk- your feet’. I am impressed
ing Seminars suggest just to see how ‘walking sem-
how much we need walk- inars’ – by combining
ing to imagine alternatives scholarly and bodily prac-
to the intertwined human tices – are creating new
and nonhuman catastro- and inspiring communities
phes of the Anthropo- for the future: of empirical
cene.” observations, challeng-
ing ideas, and interesting
– Anna Tsing, Aarhus Uni- people.”
versity and the University
of California, Santa Cruz – Cornelius Holtorf,
Linnaeus University
photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
Preface
I have been involved in a invite questions, they dare me
number of walking seminars to pay attention.
over the years, and each time I
take away something different. This publication is the result of
I think that for researchers it is my time as artist-in-residence
probably a good thing to aban- at the Reinwardt Academy of
don a distanced and disinter- the Amsterdam University of
ested stance and to feel more the Arts in 2017 and 2018.
implicated in the situations that The intellectual origins of
they study. Implication, entan- the project predate the art-
glement, empathy, messiness: ist-in-residence period. In April
these are the strategies and 2014 Christian and I, both at
situations to which, I believe, the time based at the Universi-
we will have to turn if we are to ty of Cape Town, visited South
find a way through the social Africa’s Cederberg area, well
and environmental challeng- known for its rock art, with
es of the Anthropocene. The Colombian archaeologist Cris-
university as institution, with tóbal Gnecco and Swedish his-
its lumbering traditions and torian of ideas Mikela Lundahl.
hallowed formats, needs to be During this get-together, the
more nimble and more humble. project’s three lines of inquiry
Scholars should be encouraged were articulated: namely, 1)
to write from the heart, as well exploring the intersection be-
as from the mind. tween conventional scholarship
and forms of artistic research
I find that it is often in the and practice; 2) using walking
weeks and months following a as a methodology to engage
walking seminar that I feel the landscapes and histories; 3)
full benefits of the conversa- rethinking time, materiality,
tions, reflections, new experi- and memory. Project funding
ences, and ideas. As occasions, for the Table Mountain Walk-
they nourish my research and ing Seminar has come from
teaching practice. Increasing- the Amsterdam University of
ly, I experiment with taking Arts, the University of Gothen-
the classroom outdoors. My burg, Aarhus University, and
visits to Cape Town now take the University of Cape Town.
on a kind of valedictory as- Funding for this publication
pect, which itself may be part came from the Amsterdam
of our shared journey deeper University of Arts. All these
into the Anthropocene. I have institutions are acknowledged
seen landscapes that I thought with gratitude.
I knew well over the course
of 30 years changed over the Nick Shepherd
past four or five years. I feel
as if I have taken too much
for granted, that I should be
paying more attention – that
we should all be paying more
attention. Finally, this is what
the walking seminars do for
me: they provoke curiosity, they
photos: Sara C. F. de Gouveia
2 3
Embodied research
in emergent
grams in Berlin, in the Groningen province of the Netherlands,
and at the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam.
One of the intentions of the walking seminars is to flatten out the
hierarchies between theory and practice, and between scholarly
and creative practices. We favor hybrid collaborations involving,
for example, an architect, a philosopher, and a choreographer
in thinking about the micro-politics of collecting water from a
Anthropocene
particular city spring. We also favor a model of quick publication,
whereby work is produced in multiple formats inside and outside
the formal academic apparatus. We have tried various formula-
tions in thinking about the work (or craft) of putting together a
walking seminar. We “stage” or “curate” these occasions, which
feel performative in a relaxed and unselfconscious way. They also
feel like interventions of a particular kind. Through time, we have
developed certain practices and protocols, a kind of “how to” of
walking seminars. We invite participants on the walking seminars
with the theme in mind, and we share literature and reading lists.
We also invite “resource people” to drop in and tell us about
landscapes
their research, activism, or passion. Some of our protocols speak
to group dynamics and relationships. As conveners or curators
we work hard to create a framework for each walking seminar,
inviting interesting participants and putting in place the logis-
tics – warm beds, good food, viable routes – but then we tend to
“We argue that the nature of leave things alone. This allows for the group to find its own logic
and way of working. One of our ideas is that the group is its own
this crisis demands bold and resource. People bring amazing subject knowledges, rich bodies
of experience, and incredible skills. It becomes important to open
unconventional responses, the spaces and occasions that allow these to be shared. Another
including from scholars and guiding idea is that the walking seminars are co-curated by all the
participants, meaning that everyone shares responsibility for the
Nick Shepherd creative practitioners.” outcome. Often these outcomes are subtle and difficult to define:
a change in affect, or a deep change in feeling about a topic.
Christian Ernsten Creating flat hierarchies among scholars, creative artists, and
Dirk Jan Visser activists sometimes means working against established modes of
engagement. We have experimented with encouraging ideas but
banning theory, where theory then becomes the self-conscious
performance of a certain kind of expertise: name-dropping, or
The Table Mountain Walking Seminar has become a semi-annual prepared me for making sense of this planetary conjuncture in There are many ways of approaching the challenges of embodied using the five or ten keywords currently in vogue. We have also Chakrabarty, D.
event. The seminar brings together between 12 and 18 scholars, which humanity finds itself today” (Chakrabarty 2009: 199). research in the Anthropocene. For us, walking provides a produc- experimented with not carrying maps and only having a hazy idea 2009. The Climate
of History: Four
artists, activists, curators, and practitioners for an intensive week tive and interesting way of opening out to some of these questions of the road ahead. Often the weather is unpredictable: high winds, Theses. Criti-
of walking, talking, and sharing work and ideas. We follow the To situate oneself in the Anthropocene is to write from the midst and concerns. Rebecca Solnit writes: “Walking itself is the inten- harsh sun, sudden storms. Feeling lost, improvising, making a cal Inquiry 35:
route of the Hoerikwaggo Trail, the approximately 80 kilometer of a crisis. We argue that the nature of this crisis demands bold tional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing plan: all of this feels like good training as we journey deeper into 197–222.
trail linking Cape Point to the city of Cape Town along the spine and unconventional responses, including from scholars and and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between the Anthropocene.
Mignolo W. 2013.
of mountains that make up the Cape Peninsula. Days of walking creative practitioners. An ironic contradiction between form and working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that pro- Geopolitics of
are interspersed with days of workshopping and practice. Nights content characterizes much of the discourse around the An- duces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals” (Solnit 2001: Often the seminars become playful as choreographers improvise Sensing and
are spent in the trail’s beautifully sited tented camps. thropocene, as we discuss the radical implications of the current 5). Later in the same passage, she writes: “Walking, ideally, is a movement exercises with the group, photographers play with Knowing: On
state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as different exposures, and scholars turn to poetry. In fact, think- (De)Coloniality,
conjuncture using familiar and tired old forms: jetting around the Border Thinking,
Our starting idea was simple: to bring together the most interest- world to conferences and workshops, sitting in hotels and con- though they were three characters finally in conversation together, ing about the relationship between seriousness and playfulness, and Epistemic
ing possible group of people and create the kinds of environments vention centers, setting up talk-shops that explore ideas at arm’s three notes making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and about the uses of playfulness as a resource through which to Disobedience.
that allow for the free exchange of work and ideas. At the core length. and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us approach serious topics, becomes a conceptual point of departure. Confero: Essays
free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts” (Solnit Focusing on methodology is an unexpectedly rich way of collab- on Education,
of the seminars is the practice and craft of walking, as a form of Philosophy and
embodied research and as a way of engaging with the new and Another source for the walking seminars is the contemporary 2001: 5). In this regard, she writes of “walking’s peculiar utility for orating across disciplines. We love learning new ways of working. Politics. 1(1):
emergent landscapes of the Anthropocene. We have an interest in discussion around decolonial thinking and practice. The debate thinkers” (Solnit 2001: 6). We like the fact that walking involves Sometimes our starting instruction to the group is: “Tell us how 129–150.
the notions of body as archive, landscape as archive, performance surrounding the environment often seems like a rather white, mid- physical effort, and the fact that it provokes curiosity. For us, you would make sense of this issue or phenomenon, working from
there is something respectful about walking as a way of engaging Shepherd N. and
as archive. We have an interest, too, in what it means to think dle-class affair, especially in South Africa. The middle classes fuss your own discipline or practice. Teach us how you work.” C. Ernsten. 2016.
through the body, affect, and senses. Paying attention to the ma- about species loss and the destruction of habitats, while poorer landscapes and socialities, something effortful and up-close – very Reasoning, Emo-
teriality of sites and remains, we are interested in the layering of communities struggle to survive amid conditions of bare life. The different from the kind of god’s-eye perspective of conventional We are often asked, especially by funders: What are the outputs tioning, Dream-
memory and experience as palimpsest and as stratigraphy. disconcerting fact of the Anthropocene is that we are all in this modes of scholarship. In a beautiful phrase, the Colombian phi- and outcomes of the walking seminars? We ask participants to ing: Introduction
to the 2015 Cape
together, but some are more “in it” than others. It seems likely losopher Santiago Castro-Gomez calls this latter mode of en- make a commitment to collaborate and to produce work in mul- Town Curato-
Conceptually speaking, a key source for the walking seminars is that poorer and more marginalized individuals and communities gagement the “hubris of the zero-point”. Walking discourages this tiple formats. So, at one level, the outputs can be measured in rial Residency.
the contemporary debate around the Anthropocene. We argue in the Global South will bear a disproportionately large share of kind of hubris, placing you firmly in a particular place and time, standard-format academic articles, photographic essays, creative Postamble 10(1):
halfway up a mountain with 10 kilometers to go before dinner. non-fiction, poetry, musical compositions, project proposals, 1–6.
that, among other things, this debate gives us a strong mandate the burden of climate change. The Anthropocene threatens to re-
to pursue innovative transdisciplinary research methods, and to capitulate the planetary injustices of colonialism and imperialism. performance proposals and scripts, collaborative grant applica- Solnit, R. 2000.
break with conventional distinctions between culture and nature, It becomes vital to join the debate around global environmental Each week-long seminar is convened around a theme. The 2015 tions, work published for the media, public talks and lectures, Wanderlust: A
mind and body, intellect and imagination. In his important essay change to the debate around social and economic justice, just as Table Mountain Walking Seminar, which took place in December conference presentations, and so on. At another level, though, the History of Walk-
2015 in the aftermath of the events of #RhodesMustFall, them- outcomes are more subtle and difficult to calibrate, and possibly ing. New York:
“The Climate of History”, the postcolonial historian Dipesh it becomes vital to locate the roots of the current crisis – which, Penguin.
Chakrabarty makes a startling admission. Writing about climate after all, is the crisis of a certain kind of modernity and globaliza- selves sited on the lower slope of Devil’s Peak, a part of the Table more transformative. Putting people together for a week in an
change and global warming, he says: “As the crisis gathered tion – in historical processes of racism, colonialism, and imperi- Mountain chain, was themed around “Decolonizing Table Moun- environment of shared challenge, thoughtfulness, and creativity
momentum in the last few years, I realized that all my readings alism. Colonialism was not just about the conquest of people and tain”. The 2018 Table Mountain Walking Seminar was themed creates a hothouse atmosphere that can be generative of “new-
in theories of globalization, Marxist analysis of capital, subaltern territories; it was also about the conquest of the natural worlds, around “Fire and Water”, picking up on the current water crisis in ness”: new ideas, new perspectives, new collaborations. Engaging
studies, and postcolonial criticism over the last twenty-five years, opened up by a strategy of geographical exploration and colonial Cape Town. Involving students from the Reinwardt Academy, we the body, the senses, and affect aligns ideas with deep feelings and
while enormously useful in studying globalization, had not really conquest. convened shorter walking seminars as part of their course pro- profound commitments.
4 5
Walking
Seminar 2014:
Traces in the
landscape
Landscape
as palimpsest
A key source for the walking seminars is an interest ment with the past under the heading of “a history
in deep time and in history as a form of material in- of fragments”. If some forms of narrative history are
scription on the landscape. Bringing an archaeological premised on text, voice, and a certain kind of plenitude,
sensibility to bear, one can interpret the landscape which may be the plenitude of the archive, then the idea
as a palimpsest of a particular kind. The site of Peers of “a history of fragments” works from other sources:
Cave on the northern edge of the Fish Hoek Valley has shells, bones, bricks, pieces of ceramics, graffiti, the tem-
archaeological deposits that attest to half a million years porary shelters of the dispossessed, plastic containers for
of hominin occupation. Further south, the ruins of Red holding water, house foundations, remains of footpaths,
Hill Village and the dystopian dormitory town of “Ocean discarded toys, orphaned photographs, trees scorched by
View” speak of apartheid-era forced removals and the fire. We like that these fragments do not tell a story with
racial cleansing of urban spaces. What would it mean to a recognizable beginning, middle, and end, and that
push these sites into the same frame, or to read them their status as sources is ambiguous and unreliable. We
together as part of a story of human dwelling and being also like the fact that they present us with the entangled
in this part of the city? We are used to chopping up and processes by which they were made and discarded, but
segmenting time, and then parceling out this segmented also with the accident of their survival, as assemblages
time to the different disciplines. Is it possible to think of without reason. This kind of detritus forecasts the fu-
time differently, in ways that allow us to make connec- ture, in that it is precisely by such signs that our civiliza-
tions between times, places, and phenomena? tion will be known, in the archaeological way.
Viewing history as a form of material inscription on the
landscape opens up ideas around attentiveness and the
possibilities for a close reading of landscape based on
fragments and traces. Our engagement with the past and
with elapsed time is then potentially mediated by some-
thing other than text, image, and the forms of narrative
history: it becomes mediated by fragments, traces, and Slangkop camp
the signs of ruination. We explore this mode of engage- photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
6 7
British World War II bunkers, Cape Point Fragments
photo: Dirk-Jan Visser photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
Returning the gaze
of the Elephant’s Eye Black Rock Cave
–– Hedley Twidle Postscript
As the hike progressed, our evening seminars fell en- –– Nick Shepherd
tirely silent – we were too tired to muster the explic-
Last time I did it with three five days. Driving in hours what War II radar posts, lighthous- itness that academic discussion requires. The knowl- Well, this is a surprise: my What do we have here? Bits thread together destinations. are small, maybe a meter and
old friends, and in the oppo- we would walk back along in es with their own frequency edge was being registered in our bodies: in our skin hands. They look worn, archae- of decayed newspaper: words, It feels calmer, more integral, a half in length. Still, there is
site direction. This time from days. I remember this also from of flashes. Lo-fi technologies that began to burn or darken; in calf muscles that ological. It’s not often that we text, pretty much the last thing somehow more honest. Right something sinuous about their
Cape Point to town with a my father running me up the still at play: the shark-spotters began to work all morning; in livers and kidneys that have a part of our own body we would expect to find in in the middle of the image we movement that freaks out a
group of people whom I didn’t N2 to the trailhead at Storms above Muizenburg, the Moun- were being squeezed and torqued and squeezed and presented to us in this way, this context. A rule of thumb: see the reconstructed Dias very ancient part of the human
know quite as well, most of River, many years ago: over the tain Men scanning backyards torqued all day. In eyes that were focusing on things as the point of such focused archaeology begins where text cross, used as a navigational brain. (It is the same sinuous
them university types. The idea gorges, over the bridges. from above Fish Hoek. Appar- farther away than screens. In hair (mine) that I took looking. We see photographs of leaves off. The fragment that beacon. It puts us in mind of motion that snakes have.) You
(not mine) was to turn it into ently they can tell likely crimi- pleasure in wiping sticky and sweaty hands through. faces, in which case our gaze I am holding says “Personal” the Portuguese mariner Bar- get over your fear; you hang in
a walking seminar on “nature Two was…I can’t remember. nals just from their gait: hands is drawn to the eyes. There is (or “Personals”), which I find tolemeu Dias (c. 1451 to 29 the clear water; the sharks do
cultures”, a trial run for a res- The link is broken. Once it behind the back, because in Back home after the hike, I talk with Tyler through the slightly misleading sense slightly unnerving. The literary May 1500), who rounded the their thing beneath your feet.
idency that will happen not in existed, but by the end of the Pollsmoor you’re not allowed the kitchen window. He speaks about his planned of intimacy and collusion, the scholars in the group are all en- Cape in 1488. This is part of I think of the words “bottom
institutional buildings but out day, blood or dehydration had to touch the walls. Can that trip back to the Eastern Cape, how his wife went sense of traffic with the image. couraged: you see, the entirety the official history of South Af- feeder”. I think of the Neil
in the air. flushed out or shut down that be true? Meanwhile those in to buy an Intercape ticket but the Shoprite was too (The eyes interpolate us.) Here of human experience is actually rica that every school child has Young song “Cortez”. Maybe
neural pathway. This was the prison look at the mountain busy. He will only take buses, because at least there the hands appear as something comprehensible through writ- drummed into them. So this Bartolemeu Dias moved with
Slightly sceptical of this at first thing we soon realized: after over the walls like Mandela are two drivers, while the taxis just shuttle up and alien, as specimens. There is ten text as medium. A vague photograph turns out to stage a sinuous motion? Or maybe,
– all I wanted from the hike was a day hiking across the Cape did, returning the gaze of the down the N2, solo pilot. something strange about the sort of defeat for archaeology, colonial history for us. We have diving, I am in the position of
to decompress, let the mind Peninsula, being strafed by sun Elephant’s Eye. The imprisoned positioning of my left hand, and another moment to add Black Rock Cave in the fore- the historian, observing life,
empty after a strangely shaped and wind, there is not much poet Breyten Breytenbach: “I pray to God before I go, I believe in the Big Man an awkward articulation of the to the thick file titled “strange ground, site of hunter-gatherer overcoming my fear.
year. But still, on the first day I to say. The knowledge gained “the mountain: my companion, up there.” fingers. I have fragments of encounters”. habitation, and then we have
played along, using my prima- is implicit, recorded in joints, my guide, my reference point, “Bawo Thixo Somandla,” I say. newspaper in my palm, and I’m the sign of an assertive Europe-
ry school teacher Mr. Bench’s muscles, darker skin, stiffer my deity, my fire, my stultified He recognizes the song and we begin singing to trying to prevent them from Looking south from the an presence in the mid-ground.
memory technique (one-drum, hair, delicious tiredness. Was flame, and finally – like a pre- each other through the burglar bars. blowing away. There is also promontory So much for macro-history;
two-shoe, three-tree, four- it that the shoe pinches? Two historic receptacle – the mould an irony to this image, which The first day of the hike takes I’ll tell you a story. Two weeks
door etc.) to log impressions months later, my big toenails of my mind, my eye, my very No such thing as writer’s block: just give an objec- has to do with the appearance us through Cape Point Nature before the hike my friend Mary
that seemed worth rescuing are still black. self.” tive account of the difficulties you are facing. of text in an archaeological Reserve, starting at the tip took me diving in the little bay
from the tide of heat, sweat, My difficulty is that I don’t know what horse to setting. The story goes like this. of Cape Point and exiting in that you see to the left of the
walking, foot on rock, sand, Three: Snipers in a tree. We go back. Throw my energy behind personal writing, We are in Black Rock Cave in the afternoon at the northern frame. This is known as a spot
gravel. The sensorium changes, past the training grounds of the narrative essays, or academic work. All at the same Cape Point Nature Reserve, a gate, where the rest camp is where gully sharks gather, and
opens… South African Marines and the time? I feel scrambled and my attention span is site of hunter-gatherer occu- located. The reserve has to be where occasionally you will see
taxi driver tells us they train corroded. I am not reading enough, certainly not in pation with a dense accumu- one of my favorite places on eagle rays. You swim out into
One was a drum turning like a snipers here. Elevation, surveil- my specialization. My friends are all having chil- lation of shell debris, bedding earth, and the hike allowed me the bay. When you find a likely
wheel: we are picked up by taxi lance, lines of sight and fire. dren; my car’s paintwork is atrocious. My deactiva- material, ash, and so on. Bits of to experience it in a new way. spot, you hang onto the kelp photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
at 6 a.m., driven the length of That is one way of understand- tion of Facebook lasted all of one morning. I want shell and bone erode out of the When you visit a place by car and watch the seabed below.
the peninsula that we would ing the mountain chain, from to dive into something, submerge myself entirely. sediment, and something else… you have “destinations”: this The sharks swim into your
track back along over the next the small canon that warned But what? In the absence of knowing that I just dive beach, that mountain, that field of vision, sometimes two
the British about hostile ships into water. view. The point of the hike is or three at a time. Gully sharks
entering False Bay, to World instead to cross territory, to
8 9
Beach talk Shipwreck on Long Beach
photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
–– Christian Ernsten
It’s hard to think of anything and travel literature, resulting Robert Macfarlane’s The Old
other than the crazy hike up in an impromptu and kind of Ways and Mountains of the
Chapman’s Peak during Day 3. random reading list: Mind and, in relation to city
Walking an eroding path curv- walking, Teju Cole’s Open City.
ing up the mountain while car- Dirk and Nick spoke about I recalled how Dutch artist
rying full packs and challenged Dutch author Geert Mak and and mapmaker Jan Rothuizen
by strong winds. Not one of my his books In Europe and Trav- had advised me to read Bruce
best moments! els without John, the latter Chatwin’s Songlines and Barry
about John Steinbeck’s travels Lopez’s Artic Dreams. Specif-
But actually the day started through the US, as well as ically for our hike, we spoke
with a soothing walk on Noord Tony Judt’s Postwar. I spoke about Dan Sleigh’s Islands and
hoek Beach. For the first time with Hedley about W. G. Nicolaas Vergunst’s Hoerikwag-
perhaps, we walked and talked. Sebalt’s Austerlitz and Rings go.
We exchanged ideas on walking of Saturn. Hedley mentioned
10 11
Escaping
from the
“white cube”
rience, desire, imagination, fear, delight, the small details of daily He writes that this single sentence expresses “the basic categories
life that saturate our affective selves. The discourse of the seminar of border epistemology” (Mignolo 2007: 495).
room is presented here in slightly parodied form. Nevertheless,
it is true that our principle forms of scholarly engagement are One of the things that I like about the walking seminars is that
remarkably disembodied, and that they tend to be based on and they involve passages of hard work and are sometimes physically
to reinforce a set of distinctions: mind versus body, reason versus challenging. We become aware of our bodies in new ways as we
emotion and imagination, thinking versus feeling. I am interested sweat our way to the end of the trail; we become reliant on ba-
in the political and epistemic consequences of this dominant form sic things like water, good shoes, a map, and the ability to find
of scholarly engagement. What happens to black bodies, or to our way around an unfamiliar landscape. We are thrown back on
queer bodies, or to women, or to bodies that have grown up speak- ourselves, and on the idea that our technology will not save us as
of the
ing languages other than English in such a set-up? My past expe- we journey deeper into the Anthropocene. A real concern on the
rience as a scholar based at the University of Cape Town in South most recent Table Mountain Walking Seminar (March 2018) was a
Africa presented this situation to me on a daily basis as nothing concern with the physical safety of the group, following a spate of
less than a savage indictment of the coloniality of the universi- knife attacks on hikers. In the end, we put our faith in stout walk-
ty as institution. In the average seminar situation, students were ing sticks, vigilance, and the solidarity of the group.
required to discuss abstract knowledge in an imperial language,
disavowing the things that condition their daily experience: being I like the idea that walking involves a certain kind of dwelling in
black, being a woman, being worried about personal safety, being the landscape, with ideas around duration (being in the landscape
worried about money, having to negotiate the long journey to and for a passage of time) and exposure (being open to, or exposed to,
from the university each day, being denied the forms of discourse external influences). This works in both busy urban environments
through which to have a meaningful discussion about any of these and in the more contemplative environments of Table Mountain
seminar
things. In other words, their relationship to knowledge begins by National Park. I also like the idea that the physical work of walk-
excluding the very thing that so profoundly conditions their expe- ing points towards a certain practice of respect, like a pilgrimage,
rience under and after apartheid: embodied being in the world. as we pass through known and beloved or new landscapes. As
climates change and beloved landscapes are transformed before
I would argue that this is a form of scholarly practice that is not our eyes, as is happening in Cape Town right now, perhaps the
so much about making connections between things as it is about act of walking takes on an elegiac quality, as we say goodbye to
making and enforcing a set of disconnections: disarticulating the landscapes that we know and begin our ambiguous journey
knowledge from experience, and thinking from feeling. So how do into the future, into landscapes shaped by fire and drought and as
we bring the body into play in more embodied forms of research yet unchartered social formations. As raced and gendered bodies,
practice? And how do we break down some of the distinctions set subjected to local histories of colonial modernity, our relationship
up by the discourse of the seminar room, in ways that are pro- to these landscapes will be very different and will run the spec-
room
ductive and that open out to new research understandings? There trum from hedonism to bare life. Table Mountain, one of the most
are many ways of answering these questions, with the walking heavily touristed sites in Africa and a recently proclaimed “natural
seminar being one modest answer. The idea of walking as a form wonder of the world”, was historically a site of refuge for escaped
of embodied research practice draws from a rich literature on slaves from the Cape Colony, and it is currently a refuge for mi-
the anthropology of walking, referencing the work of Tim Ingold, grants fleeing conflict and economic hardship in other parts of the
“We become aware of our bodies in Rebecca Solnit, and others. It also draws from a rich and genera-
tive strand in urban studies on walking as a methodology through
continent.
new ways as we sweat our way to which to engage city spaces, referencing the work of Michel de
Certeau and others. Drawing on affective and sensorial research
Partly because many discussions of the Anthropocene take on a
serious and censorious tone, as Bruno Latour has noted, I am
the end of the trail: our reliance on methods, it asks questions about what it means to encounter
emergent Anthropocene landscapes through the surfaces of the
interested in using playfulness as a resource through which to
address a serious topic. I am thinking of playfulness not as the
basic things like water, good shoes, body. Drawing on the debate around artistic research methods and opposite of seriousness, but as something that exists in a more
practice as research, it asks questions about the productive uses complex relationship to seriousness, even as the index of a special
a map, and the ability to find our of imagination, creativity, and desire in the pursuit of empirical kind of seriousness. That the walking seminars often turn playful is
way around an unfamiliar land- research, and about the use of experience as a resource. a big part of their appeal.
Nick Shepherd scape.” Perhaps most pertinently, it draws on contemporary discussions
in decolonial thinking and practice around challenging hegemonic
modes of knowledge production. In his recent work, Walter Mi-
gnolo has described the forms of knowledge attendant on colonial
modernity as an “ego-politics of knowledge”, grounded in the
Cartesian dualism between mind and body. Against this ego-poli-
One of the sources for the idea of the walking seminars is an tics of knowledge he proposes a “body-politics of knowing/sensing/
irritation with the white cube of the typical seminar room, and understanding”, grounded in an understanding of the place from
an awareness of all that it excludes. The discourse of the semi- which knowledge proceeds (Mignolo 2013: 132). In conversa-
nar room imposes a stringent set of rules: we sit in chairs around tion, he talks of linked processes of “reasoning” and “emotioning”
desks; we meet as disembodied intelligences, as eyes that see, as (Mignolo 2015; Ernsten and Shepherd 2016). Some of Mignolo’s
mouths that speak; we speak one of the imperial (“global”) lan- most engaging writing takes place in his evocation of this embod-
guages; we talk about “theory”; we cite from approved canons; we ied other place of knowledge, imagined not as an essentialized
mention the five or six currently trending keywords. Apart from outside of Western reason, but as an embodied inside/outside: the
a few important exceptions – discussions in queer theory, cer- place of “border thinking” and of things known “in the bones”. As
tain strands of feminist theory, forms of decolonial thinking and a source for these various ideas, Mignolo cites the “prayer” with
practice – we agree to leave at the door, as it were, many aspects of which Frantz Fanon so memorably concludes Black Skin,White
what defines us as embodied beings in the world: memory, expe- Masks: Oh my body, make me always a man who questions.
12 13
Walking
Seminar
2015:
Decolonizing
Table
Reasoning, emotio-
Mountain ning, dreaming
The conceptualization of the 2015 walking seminar hap-
pened against the backdrop of rising student activism
As Walter Mignolo explains it: “Emotioning implies
responses to body-knowledge that reasoning processes
and protest in South African universities, initiatives that through semiotic systems. Emotioning was banned from
demanded (and continue to demand) radical academic Western epistemology under the belief that it obstructs
transformation. In addition, 2015 started with an epic objectivity. In so doing, it hid from view the fact that
Table Mountain fire that destroyed 5,500 hectares of no one is convinced by reasoning and arguments, if
land and ended with the worst drought in the country one is not also convinced in his or her emotioning”
ever. These quite different events conveyed a strong (pers. comm. 2016). We were also interested in explor-
sense of urgency, both with regard to the struggle to ing fantasy and imagination as sources for creative and
reformulate knowledge in the context of a transitional intellectual work. There are many points of inspiration
society faced with manifestations of the violent princi- and connection for this set of approaches. For us, they
ples at the heart of colonial modernity and with regard included affective research methodologies, forms of ar-
to the Anthropocene, as one of colonial modernity’s tistic research methodologies, and discussions of deco-
unintended consequences. lonial love, inspired by the work of the feminist scholar
Chela Sandoval. Referring to Che Guevara and Frantz
In response, we were interested in what it meant to be Fanon, Sandoval speaks of love as “a ‘rupturing’ in one’s
physically present in the act of inquiry, and in the resul- everyday world that permits crossing over to another”
tant palette of emotions (pain, fear, anxiety, irritation, (Sandoval, 2000: 139).
pleasure, desire). We were also interested in the linearity
and rhythm of walking and in its relationship to talking
and thinking. So much scholarship involves forms of dis- Sandoval C. 2000. Methodology of
the Oppressed, Minneapolis:
embodied research and reportage: what happens when University of Minnesota Press.
the body, affect, the senses, and the imagination enter
the equation? We were keen to validate emotion along-
side reason, drawing on discussions of “emotioning”.
photo: Barry Christianson
14 15
Good hope after
#RhodesMustFall
This is a review of the exhibition
“Good Hope: South Africa and the
Netherlands from 1600” at Rijks-
museum, Amsterdam, 17 February
to 21 May 2017
Nick Shepherd Rhodes Memorial
photo: Dirk-Jan Visser
Christian Ernsten
A Dutch trans- We see the back of a head. It is a beautiful head, both recognizable have shifted: in public culture, in parliamentary debates, in the constraints of contemporary society, and hence the call to “decol-
lation of this text and distinguished. Nelson Mandela! We understand that we are in university seminar room, around the dinner table. The unavoid- onize” knowledge, the curriculum, and society itself. Rather than
was published in
the Dutch daily safe hands. As scholars who divide our time between Cape Town able question that follows for curators and audiences is: How do a modern notion of linear progressive time, the idea here is one of
newspaper NRC. and Amsterdam, we approached the exhibition “Good Hope: we approach an exhibition like “Good Hope” after the events of recurrence, a certain stuckness in the social relations of the past,
South Africa and the Netherlands from 1600” with high expecta- #RhodesMustFall (the student-led social movement that began in and the concomitant need to break free of these relations.
tions. And, indeed, there is much to admire. The beautiful panora- March 2015 at the University of Cape Town)?
mas by Robert Jacob Gordon, the eerie portraits of children born The second point concerns the perspective from which histo-
after 1994 by photographer Pieter Hugo, and a set of stereoscopic The rest of this short review is an account of how we would explore ry is told and imagined. Precisely because colonial institutions
images of the South African War that bring the past to life with such a question with our museology and heritage studies students and apartheid constructed whiteness as power and blackness as
startling clarity are some of the highlights. So why did we walk at the Reinwardt Academy and the University of Cape Town. From alterity, students in the #Fallist movement question what it means
away from the exhibition with the sense of an opportunity missed? a formal, curatorial perspective, the exhibition is governed by two to develop a white gaze on black histories. They talk about white
ideas. bodies and black bodies in formerly colonial institutions – univer-
“Good Hope” tells the story of relations between the Netherlands sities, museums, galleries – and about what it means to navigate
and South Africa from a date just prior to the Dutch settlement. The first is the idea of episodic history. The exhibition is arranged such spaces. In this context, the decision not to co-curate the exhi-
As the exhibition statement somewhat disingenuously puts it: in a series of rooms. Each room deals with a different period, or bition “Good Hope” with South African – especially black South
“What happens when white folks come to live in a black coun- topic, starting with the distant past and ending with the present. African – scholars and curators becomes a strong statement.
try?” Such a formulation immediately provokes a set of questions. Walking through the exhibition is like a walk through time. This
In what sense did van Riebeeck and his fellow settlers think of is a conventional curatorial device, but one of its consequences is The challenge is to think history differently. The opportunity is to
themselves as “white”? (They didn’t: they might have thought of that, as we enter each new room, we leave the things of the previ- use such reflections to pose critical questions about the present.
themselves as Dutch, and possibly as Christian and Protestant.) ous room behind us. Time becomes a line marked by breaks, and One starting point would be to approach such histories from an
In what sense is South Africa a “black country”? Surely, the story what we experience in an embodied way is the discontinuity be- awareness of the geo-politics and the body-politics of the persons
here is about the historical coming into being of ideas of “white- tween periods, which are presented as discrete historical episodes. doing the knowing. Another starting point would be to think of
ness” and “blackness” as a result of colonial institutions and The second governing idea is a focus on key personalities. These history not as a series of rooms located in the past, but as a living,
apartheid, rather than a retrospective projecting of such identities include Jan van Riebeeck, Paul Kruger, and Nelson Mandela. breathing presence that both burdens the present and acts as a
back in time? Again, this is a conventional curatorial strategy, and one that is kind of birthright.
useful in that it seems to provide an easy entry point into complex
A general critique concerns the under-representation of black historical moments. On the downside, it tends to obscure social One could try to develop a more radical notion of relationality
South African artists and scholars. In fact, there seems to be processes and ideas of relationality. Individuals become represen- between the Netherlands and South Africa. Such an account
surprisingly little traction with the rich South African tradition of tative of historical periods. might try to connect contemporary xenophobia in South Africa
historical scholarship in general. A vagueness around historical with anti-immigration sentiment in the Netherlands, or it could
agency and motivation is also a problem with an exhibition that So how are such strategies challenged by the events of connect the globalism of the Dutch East India Company with
presents the account of relations between the Netherlands and #RhodesMustFall? This social movement began as a series of contemporary forces of transnationalism the world over. Or one
South Africa as a story of “culture shared and influence recipro- spontaneous protests against a statue of Cecil Rhodes situated in a could think about how the ideas and practices of race developed
cated”. The major impact of the Dutch on local lifeways at the prominent location on the University of Cape Town campus. They in the former colonies get deeply scripted into the story of colonial
Cape had to do with the introduction of racial slavery and the quickly morphed into a more expansive critique of the legacies of modernity, in the Global North as much as in the Global South.
genociding of the Cape San. One suspects that this is not the colonialism and apartheid in the university, and in South African In this perspective, South Africa would be not the “other” of the
sense of culture that the curators have in mind. society at large. Students asked questions about the Eurocentric Netherlands but its reflected self.
nature of knowledge and of the university curriculum, about the
Such comments are the sort of thing that curators have come to over-representation of white scholars, and about an institutional
expect. The job of the critic is easy: you stand back and find fault. culture that they characterized as institutional whiteness. Later in
So let’s change gears. Instead of standing back, let’s walk together. 2015, these critical energies broadened beyond their initial base at
We want to suggest that the deeper reasons for the exhibition’s the university, and, under the heading of #FeesMustFall, assumed
missed opportunity have to do with the nature of the present the character of a national student revolution. Intense conflicts be-
moment. Ten years ago, the exhibition might have worked. But tween protesting students and university management shut down
something has shifted in South Africa in the past few years, and South African universities in 2015, and again in the second half of
this shift has everything to do with questions of history and repre- 2016.
sentation.
The #Fallist critique of history and representation runs in sev-
We would argue that South Africa has entered a different era: eral directions, but for our present purposes there are two points
not the post-apartheid, but perhaps the post-post-apartheid. The that bear repeating. The first is a critique of episodic history, or
elements of this shift are complex, but they include a popular turn the tendency to think of history as a series of discrete periods.
away from the ideology of non-racialism that drove the libera- Rather, the emphasis is on legacies and afterlives. Perhaps the
tion movement as well as ongoing student protests that have shut #Fallists most radical idea is to think of the past not as past, but
down the country’s top universities. South Africa now appears to as present, in the sense that it shapes and conditions the con-
be a country haunted by unfinished business and by the weight of temporary moment. Structures and social relations from the past Rhodes at the University
its own history. The “colonial” has come roaring back, and, with recur through time, often in new forms and disguises. Hence the of Cape Town, 2014 and 2018
it, ideas of decoloniality. The terms of engagement in South Africa return to the idea of the colonial as a way of naming the structural photos: Dirk-Jan Visser
16 17
photo: Barry Christianson artwork: Meghna Singh
Mandela is dead. I can’t tell the I feel like a cyborg, suddenly oceanic routes – it all tells the that the Swedes fought very ship and care seem to be the audiovisual work. Along with
Blip, blip, blip good people from the bad. numb, devoid of emotions. I story of capitalist ventures. hard for in the 1970s. The highlight of the entire residency the audio, I have several video
–– Meghna Singh
try but there’s nothing. I want Surely, it must have been the blurb describes the film as “a experience?” Are sharing and clips too. It’s an exciting day to
II. The distant perspective to fly above all this, have a same to conquer someone’s provocative portrait of a na- care something one takes for collate everything, hear from
of a drone bird’s-eye view of the place and mountain? Do we walk in the tion of loners”. I was excited granted? Are they something all these incredible, talented
I have no recollection of this of the mountains and the sea. It’s the third day and we stop at people. I look up and there’s footsteps of the conquerors about discussing this with our that not everyone experiences people. Ilze has pulled out a
image being taken. I think it Surely there is much more to this the Redhill forced removal site. me: a drone in the sky. or the footsteps of the ances- Swedish colleagues whom I was all the time? The sharing of never-ending sheet of paper (I
was at Slangkop or Orangek- place than what we were told in Ilze gives a beautiful talk where tors? Or are the two the same? about to spend the next ten very honest personal experienc- can’t wait to see what she does
loof. It’s too close for my com- socialist India of the 1980s.” she mixes personal anecdotes III. When men and Going off on a tangent, I am days with. I think I had a brief, es left me wondering about the with it). Dani has been writing
fort, and yet not. I met Barry and family narratives to present mountains meet thinking how can one walk this interesting discussion with different nature of the societies poems. Christine has the most
recently, and he said something Our hike was set against the the story of forced removals, “As a challenge for explorers “path of nature” in search of Mikela on the topic and then we inhabit. amazing collection of acquired
about choosing it because of backdrop of student protests, not just in the Redhill area but the mountain wilderness be- solitude without reflecting on for some unexplainable reason objects. Hedley is always in-
my interest in surveillance. The building tensions, an engage- in Cape Town as a whole. She tween India and inner Asia was what peace and solitude really I dropped it. Mikela did men- V. The sound of blip, forming us with his amazing
way it’s framed within the win- ment, an anxiety, race relations, and Barry seem to understand unique. The Western Himalayas mean? I understand it’s differ- tion that the director was only blip, blip… knowledge about the new
dow makes it seem voyeuristic, black and white, an inescapable each other very well. They nod were seen as a barrier guarding ent for different people. We had half Swedish and half Italian. Blip, blip, blip: the sound on project of the Anthropocene.
but it is an honest image, I reality. The only way to escape knowingly at each other. It’s fabled cities. It took half a cen- a discussion (I think it was at However, during the course the edit timeline when you But time’s tight and I need to
guess. I am attaching two imag- would be to return to India, but that look that says, “We know tury to penetrate this barrier – Orangekloof) where I expressed of our discussions and work- don’t render the footage. It use my iMac in my studio to
es with the text. The first is the why run away from the choices this, our families went through evidence enough of the appall- the contrast in beliefs around shops, I heard people express means you don’t get to hear the create a quick video. I sit in my
one Barry chose for me. The one makes. this.” I cannot remember if or ing difficulties involved” (John what it means for me to “go how touched they were by the recorded sound or watch the studio, staring at all the footage
second is a time-lapse image of what Gcobani shared during Keay, 1977). alone into the mountains”. It care that was provided among footage without interruptions. and audio wave formats. All
the sun in the fog. The first day of the hike, that talk. It’s a point in our hike means to go into exile. On the people, the thoughtfulness, the that comes to my mind is my
driving into the Cape Point where Cape Town’s apartheid In reading an account of the other hand, there is the lonely companionship, it being an Back into the city from the first memory of the sun trying
I. Bad people and Nelson reserve, I sat in the front of the politics physically presents explorers of the Western Hima- figure of the ascetic who gives un-forgetful experience. It was mountains, I wonder if I am the so hard to break through the
Mandela van, next to the driver, filming itself within this disjointed layas, When Men and Mountains up worldly pleasures in search a great boost for the camarade- only person happy to be back. clouds, and all the voices turn
As a child, growing up in India, with my iPhone. I remember Hoerikwaggo Trail. I am look- Meet: The Explorers of the Western of enlightenment. I am con- rie and tightness of the group, I am happy to get lost amid a into a blip, blip, blip…
I remember the two phrases thinking to myself, “This image ing around and wondering Himalayas 1820–1875, which fused. I don’t understand the and I myself couldn’t agree mass of people: to be part of
that were used to describe is incredible: thick fog, mys- how many people can really glorifies the adventures of a few meaning of “solitude” anymore. more about the wonderful set a large unknown group, to see
South Africa: “bad people” and terious landscape, near-zero comprehend it beyond the level Englishmen, I can’t help but of people participating in the humanity in all its negative or
“Nelson Mandela”. Obviously visibility.” And then someone of some discussion, a lecture, think about the mountains we IV. The Swedish theory hike. However, I couldn’t help positive glory. I like crowds. I
a strategy to shelter us from any from the back of the van said a paper, a jargon? This is fol- traversed during our hike. Isn’t of love but think to myself: “What set grew up being a no one in a sea
detailed account of what apart- “A scene out of the Lord of lowed by a relaxing swim in the an adventure for some a story “Love thy neighbor.” But what of experiences does this person of crowds.
heid meant. When I first arrived Rings!” We drove on and the dam. For me, what was a point of conquest for others? I recall if you never want anything to come from that companion-
in Cape Town in 2011, this vista didn’t change. The sun of heightened personal emotion Hedley’s talk about the Por- do with your neighbor? I was The last day is spent at Hid-
strange impression from my struggled to come out, to shine melts into a leisurely swim, tuguese rounding the Cape. A exposed to a new idea of “in- ding Campus discussing,
childhood days lingered in my on us. It tried, tried really hard, another adventure in nature. conquest of the ocean, to reach dependence” in a thought-pro- sharing, and presenting our
memory. I had to tell myself, but it struggled to shine on us. I At that point I feel a strange the so-called “fabled cities”, voking documentary I watched creative ideas, thoughts, et
“It’s a beautiful place. Look at remember my thoughts drifting disconnect. I am left imagining to discover spices, to trade via at the IDFA film festival in al. I have hours of audio re-
the picturesque postcard image back to the Cape Town we had how things would have been Amsterdam just before the cordings of group discussions,
left behind. during these forced removals. hike. The Swedish Theory of people speaking, presenting,
I think about those lives and Love by Erik Gandini reflects workshops, etc. It was a pre-de-
I watch people enjoy a swim. on the notion of independence cided methodology for a final
18 19Dislocation IV. The white sand of Flats”, which was played at a
concert commemorating Alex
–– Barry Christianson the Flats
The day after this picture was
taken was a rest day. Most of
van Heerden.
the group decided to go for a At that point, a bridge seemed
I. Methodology I had no problems on the first to have been formed between
I took this picture on the day’s long hike, and I was fine long walk up the beach from
Kommetjie to Noordhoek. Christine’s world on the Aus-
Tuesday evening. Nick, Lin- until the descent into Kom- tralian landscape and the South
da, Daniela, Gcobani, and I metjie. I started to feel some African landscape. I would have
had stopped to buy a few bags pain in both knees as I start- Given the situation with my
knee, I stayed behind with Chris- a really interesting conversa-
of ice after the entire group ed to walk down but I didn’t tion with Henric and Christine
had drinks in Kommetjie. We really think much of it. It was a tine, Henric, Daniela and Linda
(who were sleeping), and Mikela. about methodologies, starting
walked back along the board- familiar kind of pain, the kind with the statement “I have no
walk and decided to walk down I would feel in the days post- idea what you guys are talking
to the lighthouse before enter- knee-cap dislocation, the kind At this point I was a bit an-
noyed with my situation. I felt about when you say methodol-
ing the camp at the sea-facing that would usually be accom- ogy!”, and we would listen to
door. panied by a feeling that the like I was missing out big time.
The thought of walking down some jazz from Cape Town and
knee-cap would dislocate again. Switzerland while cleaning up
I felt happy to be outside in the In the past, that feeling was also a long beach, swimming along
the way, and possibly grabbing and packing up before heading
cool air and also happy that accompanied by me staying off to the next camp.
the gale force winds we were my leg for about a week. a drink in Noordhoek before
exposed to at Smitswinkel were being picked up by the shuttle
seemed a lot more appealing V. Preparation for the
nowhere to be found. The pain was there; the feeling long exposure
of impending dislocation was than staying behind and clean-
ing up. That evening before we walked
I liked how defined the beam not. I decided that it would to the lighthouse we went to a
from the lighthouse was as it probably be fine if I took it bar for drinks. While chatting
swept across “the Kom” and moderately easy but kept it That said, it became a bit of a
turning point in the trip. and laughing with Daniela and
tried to capture it with my in use. I knew there would Hedley, I took pictures of both
camera. At first I could not get be pain, but I also knew how of them using Daniela’s sun-
it right and decided to try a much I could manage, and I Christine was feeling frustrated
with not having a geographi- glasses as a lens filter.
longer exposure, hoping that knew I would end up re-evalu-
the camera would record some- ating that for the remainder of cal or visual context for where
she was. I decided to show her I then decided to take quick
thing like the fan-like blurs the residency. portraits of everyone using one
light sabers make in Star Wars. a Google Earth-type map of
Cape Town, pointing out where of the solar lamps on the table
That obviously did not work, III. 20 seconds as lighting. People were start-
but the camera did record the Ever since I learned about the we were, where we had come
from, and where we were going. ing to feel a little more eased
greens of the shrubs and the concept of light years, I’ve been in. I was starting to feel more
blue of the sky. fascinated by the idea that the I showed her the location of
the Cape Flats, District 6, and comfortable using my camera
stars we see in the night sky around them.
I think Linda was curious may no longer exist. They are District 1. I spoke about the
about the photo, as always. I literally images of the past forc- winds and the sands of the
Cape Flats, both of which were photo: Barry Christianson
showed her. She suggested that ing themselves into our present.
someone stand inside the frame absent in District 1 (although
and that is how that photo- On the residency, there’s been District 6 would have been an
graph was finally made. lots of talk about time, histo- incredibly windy place), and
ries, how they overlap with the what it would have meant to
The next morning, I took present, or how the present be moved from District 1 to
Henric and Christine through a will affect the future. Hedley’s Bonteheuwel or Mannenberg:
short musical tour of the Cape thoughts on the proposed new a complete attack on all the
Flats, and they explained to me nuclear reactor – the effects senses.
exactly what “methodology” of our actions now on future
means by describing it as what homonids; Nick’s thoughts on We spoke about how the town-
had just happened right then Peer’s Cave – the uncomfort- ships subsidize the suburbs and
and there. able past thrusting itself into the middle-class ways of life in
the 1920s pre-apartheid pres- Cape Town. We spoke about
My methodology is generally ent; Christian’s thoughts on wine farms as places where
a “one thing leads to another, the histories found in District 6 this was particularly apparent.
and another, and another” and District 1 – looking back to I brought up Soms Delta as a
kind of exercise that is rarely way before the forced removals. farm with some of the better
planned from the start – basi- practices regarding workers and
cally what led up to taking this I left the shutter open for about then their music museum and
photograph. 20 seconds and was left with a their resident ethnomusicolo-
photograph comprising ghostly gist, the late Alex van Heerden,
II. (Dis)comfort zones traces of three people inhabit- and his work on Goema and
A few years ago, I dislocated ing the present, a more defined Vastrap. At this point, Chris-
both knees. In the years that landscape that will be there tine asked me what Goema
followed it would happen again when those three people have sounded like, and I played the
sporadically. The last time it left, and the light from stars Mac Mackenzie song “Goe-
happened was in 2012. Since that may no longer exist but will ma Goema”. From there we
then, I’ve been cycling a lot and probably still be seen when that moved on to Kyle Shepherd,
my knees haven’t given me any landscape no longer exists. and from Kyle we moved on to
problems…until the day this Paul Hanmer’s beautiful solo
photo was taken. track “The White Sand of the
20 21You can also read
