Walking in Bogotá and Montréal:
Adopting New Lens of Interpretation
Concordia University
Susana Vargas
To walk...
Human basic action
February, March & May 2019
Montréal and Bogotá have the great potential to be cities with points in common between them. Although they are located in different contexts, geographies and cultures, by exploring them through walking, I have been able to reflect on many aspects of pedagogy, walking, art and research. This, in fact, came to my mind by asking myself, how does walking through these cities reveal their communities? What kind of stories am I able to tell by walking? Do our backgrounds play a main role in this?
By recognizing different elements, such as art, the museums and the context of each city (such as the history of violence in Colombia, for instance) in Downtown Montreal and Bogotá during multiple walks, I created this visual journal that documents the places, objects and details which in turn reveals the processes that take place whilst I set out on these walking routes. In this visual journal I also explored new lenses of interpretation and I addressed various types of walking: memory and historic and walks.
bogotá
Location: Downtown Bogotá, La Candelaria
Route: Fragments, La Casa de Nariño (House of the president), Bolivar Square, Botero Museum, Banco de la República Museum, University of the Andes, Monserrate.
This walk is thought to recognize the old part of Bogotá. That is the reason why I decided to begin with the place that I wanted to know more about: the new art space in the National Museum that is destined to "Fragments", an artwork by Doris Salcedo. I arrived by car and took a few steps to enter the building. That’s where my walk began: when I made my first step onto the weapon-melted floor.
"Fragments" is an art space which has a floor consisting of the melted remains of 37 tons of decommissioned weapons from the former guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Salcedo worked together with 20 female victims of the conflict to build the floor of this space using the melted weapons. With this project, the artist has created a place that seeks to create dialogues, emanating from a new physical and conceptual platform.
tons of guns
37
victims of
the conflict
20
years of armed conflict
60
The experience
From the reflections made at the art space "Fragments" to contemplate the city's skyline from Monserrate
I decided to spend a lot of time in that space: I wanted to share the moment with myself and to reflect. I wanted to have time to recognize this space, created to honor Colombian victims and the end of the conflict. Salcedo, the artist, and the victims of the conflict hammered the metal together, and, with this gesture, symbolically, they reversed the power relationship imposed by the use of this armament. For me it was very impressive to contemplate this group of women participating in the construction of this memorial site commemorating the end of the armed conflict.
Through this project, the artist has conceived a place that seeks to create dialogues starting from a new physical and conceptual platform, which proposes a constant reflection on the effects and ruptures of the Colombian armed conflict (Galloway, 2019). And, in effect, that is what this space did to me. I spent around 1 and a half hours in this space. There was a documentary projected that explained the process of the artwork and the Colombian armed conflict in a clear way. It illustrated the effort made by the victims whilst shaping the floor. It demonstrated the last years of the conflict and the process of demobilization with the support of the United Nations and the Government. It highlights the process of melting the guns, as well as the voice of the victims who talk and express their processes of forgiveness and reconciliation.
In the chapter “Propositions for Walking Research” (2016) of the book The Routledge International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research, the authors mention that “walking can be an embodied and sensory way of enacting research.” (p. 259). In other words, they explain the potential of walking as a tool to generate questions and promote inquiries that can be addressed in order to develop research and new knowledge. Walking is also a way for us to connect with the world, which means that it is a way to perceive, understand and comprehend a place, a surrounding. Walking could be seen as an evocation of memory and political action, not for nothing. The peace protests in Colombia are done by walking for long distances and for a long duration of time. It is a call to action and a way to gather crowds to express and demand specific matters.
As pointed out by Rita Irwin (2013) in her article “Becoming A/r/tography”, the walks reveal the potential of the place. “The walks visited memories contemplating what was once important while also considering possibilities and exploring the potential of the place.” (p. 207). In this way, "Fragments" as an encounter of reflections around war, conflict and peace, made me reflect on the importance of using art as a pedagogical platform to generate change in societies that are facing conflicts. The importance and the effort the government is doing to include art as a platform to help the post-conflict society has come to my attention. These artworks can help us to inquire about what is happening in society. In this way, the artists manage to reflect some realities that we leave aside. Additionally, in a process of reconciliation, the ability of art and its symbolic dimension allows spaces to be opened where you can speak and create healing dialogues.
After visiting this space, I continue on my walk. During my journey recognizing the old part of Bogotá, I was thinking about the meaning of walking according to our context, and in my case, images of violence come to mind. It is important to bear in mind that Colombia is not always about dangerous situations, in fact, I have been living there all my life and nothing has happened to me. However, since I attended "Fragaments", the starting point of my walk, I kept thinking about the complex sociopolitical situation in Colombia, and how artists have been responding to it for a long time (see Muralism in Colombia in 1930 as a response to sociopolitical context. It was entrusted with critically illustrating the social history in the country, in order to come up with new proposals and changes in both the government and society.)
By engaging walking as a method of inquiry, the artwork “Cardinal signs” by the Colombian artist Libia Posada came to my attention. It consists of a collective exercise of description, visualization, location, representation and understanding of forced displacement. It recreates a series of maps of the routes described by a representative group of people, mostly women. From the oral reconstruction, the maps of the traced paths of each person are drawn up on their legs. Afterwards, a photograph is taken. The artwork addresses the story of people who have been forcedly displaced. It exemplifies how through art one can deal with sensitive topics on a social level, while appreciating a technique and its aesthetic value. This set of photographs reveal one social issue that is remarkable in Colombian history, and it is through the act of walking.
In the book The Map as Art, the author Katherine Harmon (2009) presents different artists that use cartography and create maps of their own journey to express different matters. Artist such as Francis Alÿs, William Pope, Gregor Turk, Guillermo Kuitca, and Libia Posada mapped routes through walking. Perhaps, for these artists, the act of mapmaking is a way to reveal personal experiences and the importance of locating, situating and understanding a specific condition. In the case of Posada, it is clear that she is exploring political aspects. With an internal displacement of approximately 7 million citizens (Josi, 2017), Colombia’s indigenous and rural populations have been affected by the conflict. The artwork of Posada focuses on that, pointing out the routes the victims had to live to escape the armed conflict.
Walking in this case served as a key component of the creation of her artwork. The artist, by using maps as a vehicle to demonstrate a specific journey, gives the spectator an idea of how we can address a problem. It is a way to speak in visual language, as explained by Harmon (2009), “Geographers submit to tacit agreement to obey certain mapping conventions, to speak in a malleable but standardized visual language. Artists are free to disobey these rules. They can mock preoccupation with ownership, sphere of influence, and conventional cultural orientations and beliefs.” (p. 10). It is clear that Posada, by the act of drawing the maps of forcibly displaced people, created by tracking their paths and creating an artwork, is opening the discussion to the analysis of what it means to walk in Colombia. By understanding her artwork, and after walking on the melted-weapon floor, I took a violent historic approach to reflect my notes about what it means to walk in a country that is now facing a post-conflict period.
During my journey through old Bogotá, I kept thinking about these ideas and stopped for a while in a café. I wrote some other ideas down and kept going on my walk, I kept thinking about how just by a basic human act it is possible to develop so many ideas. Just by walking and paying attention to my path I was able to perceive the places in a different manner and I was also capable of creating new ideas. It was a sunny day, 18ºC. It was also one of the few times I had walked alone in downtown Bogotá, usually I always go with someone, I prefer walking with someone rather than being by my own. To my surprise, I did not feel uncomfortable or in danger. I was aware of my path and aware of my personal belongings, but nothing else. It is clear that the safety situation is getting better, at least I perceived it in that way. The idea of using walking as a method of inquiry worked well for me in the sense that I was walking in a mindful manner, being aware of my surroundings and reflecting on my own process, on how I perceive this place and how I am able to connect and link what I have perceive with my new-found knowledge. This is a work in progress that is going to be addressed. I firmly believe the annotations, reflections and thoughts made in this visual journal have the potential to serve as a new method of inquiry and generate future questions for research.
Walking in Bogotá
montréal
Location: Old Montréal
Route: Robert Bourassa, Square Victoria, Notre Dame Basilique, Old Port.
It was not until I got to live for almost a year in Montréal that I realized how much I walk when I am away from home. I was born in Bogotá, one of the largest cities in Latin America. As a method of transportation in Bogotá, I would say walking would be the last thing on my mind, unless I was going somewhere very close. People prefer to drive, take a bus or ride a bike, but walking is not as common as it is here in Montréal.
Walking in Bogotá for me is not an option, I would rather pay for a taxi than walk, even if it is very close. There might be many reasons why people choose not to walk, such as safety reasons (mainly to avoid thieves), or distance. However, now that I have spent almost a year in Montréal, I always walk for more than one hour per day, it becomes part of your routine, part of enjoying a city where you can feel safe walking on your own at any time. The only obstacle that I have to be aware of here is the weather forecast and, in winter, not slipping on the ice.
For me, Montréal was a place where I realized a lot about my hometown. It’s not until you are away from your context that you realize and learn from it. To my surprise, Montréal, in architecture terms, or at least in its distribution, is similar to Bogotá: they both have an old town, downtown is full of tall buildings, there is a lot of construction always going on. Yet, regardless of its similarities, something feels very different. The atmosphere walking here is different to walking at home.
More than being a reflection on how I perceive Montreal as a city and its impact, while doing my walking, it became a reflection of why it is different to Bogotá. Even my body disposition here is different, as well as the way I relate to space. In most parts of Bogotá, when walking, I am always being aware of who is by my side, I am mostly very aware of my safety. Here, in Montréal, I have completely forgotten about the people that surround me and I just get lost in my ideas and my thoughts.
During a conversation I had with some colleagues, we were talking about what it means to walk in different contexts. Soon many images came to my head: images of violence, of peace marches, of all the displaced people we have in Colombia, of the fear of walking alone in the street, of constantly having to look behind me to ensure that I’m not being followed… I did not think of these images as anything unusual, I thought it was normal. I normalized it. But my perspective started to change when I heard the comments of other colleagues. One Canadian said that her biggest fear walking on the street was slipping on the ice. In Colombia that would be the least of your worries. As I get to know other contexts, I have noticed how in Colombia, to a certain extent, we have normalized violence: we have become accustomed to it. It is not until you get out of your context that you realize, appreciate and recognize aspects from your background.
Impressed by the amount of snow I came across while walking, my walking experience in Montreal was related to recognizing how I felt and perceived the walking experience in Bogotá. Despite the fact I have been living in Bogotá my whole life, it is a city where I normally don’t feel safe while walking by myself. On the contrary, walking in Montréal by myself is not a problem: I enjoy it. Additionally, the walking experience in Montréal became a way to discover sensations. It was so cold that my fingers were hurting, and my phone ran out of battery. My lips were hurting because of the cold wind, and my eyes were streaming…. My body became full of sensations, the opposite of in Bogotá, where my body was comfortable. Meanwhile, in Montréal, my mind was worried and focused on the climate. It came to a point where I decided to stop in a café and stay there for around an hour, because the cold did not let me think and reflect in peace. I was just thinking about being somewhere warm. Indeed, there is a lot of reflecting that can be done related to public space and how we can relate to it according to the context.
These personal reflections open up possibilities for me to be able to comprehend my reality and my social and cultural background in a different way. This set of walking geographies also reveals my endless process of defining myself.
The experience
40
cm of snow
degrees
-14
degrees
3
layers of thermal clothing
A/R/T
By doing this set of walks, and while writing down my thoughts and reflections, it is clear to me that there is a sense of becoming through creating movement in space. In other words, while we are walking mindfully, being aware of our surroundings and being open to new understanding, it is possible to create experiences for learning, as well as starting points for the artistic creation. Additionally, the idea of mapping these experiences through different media was very interesting to me. Mapping these experiences would let me develop further projects that are part of this process of understanding the walking experience.
ARTIST
Inspired by the walks in Bogotá and Montréal, by the artwork "Fragments", as well as by the photography and the maps made by Libia Posada, I am exploring the idea of drawing personal maps through creating abstract photographs that reveal and document my walking experiences. Maps that are not necessarily geographical but emotional, rational. They are also able to reveal layers of connections, moments and memories. In this sense, walking can also be seen as a performance act. After doing these walks, I realized that I had gathered ideas, visual images that can be used as a creative point of view to create art. In the book “Performing pedagogy” by Charles R. Garoian (1999), it is pointed out that “Performance artists use memory and cultural history to critique dominant cultural assumptions, to construct identity, to attain political agency.” (p. 2) The artwork of Libia Posada, “Cardinal Signs”, demonstrates this.
This can be seen as a practice that enabled me to create new concepts, ideas and images based on my walking experience. Overall, I believe that walking can give artists new ideas to exploit and develop. In my case, it gave me ideas on how to represent this experience, how to address symbolically the manner in which I adopt body in movement experiences.
RESEARCHER
Walking is a manner to use new resources and a way to approach a concern, a discussion, a topic. Walking can be also a methodology of inquiry if it is utilized with consciousness and awareness. For instance, it can be a way of recollecting and gathering images or visual elements that are part of a specific place. It can also be seen as a way to address discussions, to understand or to create questions regarding certain topics. For instance, through walking we can use our bodies to understand the perception of a place, of a moment. We can start from this point and create learning experiences, pieces of art, questions that need to be addressed from a researcher’s point of view. As pointed out by Rita Irwin (2013), "such pedagogies do not address us as having bodies but rather address us as bodies whose movements and sensations are crucial to our understandings.” (p. 207).
TEACHING
This experience has taught me the importance of getting to know new places as well as the importance of thinking about places from another perspective. Recognizing a place can fulfill our experience and produce new reflections and possibilities to learn. In this same way, I found it appropriate to cite Irwin (2013), "Pedagogy is no longer about what is already known but instead creates the conditions for the unknown and to think as an experiment thereby complicating our conversations.” (p. 198). This can also be reflected on the pedagogy of the school I was working at in Bogotá: more than being a teacher who is the owner of knowledge, I was taught to see myself as a guide, as a person who opens up possibilities and creates environments of learning. For instance, people tend to believe that making mistakes is not acceptable, thus children are afraid to commit mistakes and try different ways of doing things. The manner I perceive education is opposite to that, mistakes are actually a great opportunity to learn, and what really matters is to learn how to assimilate the new challenges that arise, and how to solve problems and provide new ideas, which are then transformed into actions and, in turn, positively impact the community.
As teachers, what can we offer to make the learning experience much more enriching and valuable? It is important to create methods, platforms, strategies in which students have the possibility to reflect. Walking can be used as a creative platform that encourages people to question, reflect, and analyze ideas.