Helen Scalway has replied already! How useful email can be. Question/answer, was my method lazy or clever?

Dear Helen,

I have been reading your essay about Flaneuse and wondered if you might have any useful references to artists who use/have used walking in their practice/preparation. I have little academic experience and have a dissertation to write, which is difficult, and I have beachcombed and wandered since the early years. This subject is of genuine interest to me and your help would be very much appreciated. I am yet to choose a precise title or argument.

Thank you very much,

Josh.

I think that that was fair and honest.

Dear Josh

Such a lot! It's where to start....once you get into it there will be stacks of stuff.

Theory... Charles Baudelaire wrote a key essay at the end of the 19th century; and you will probably have come across Janet Wolff's work on the Invisible Flaneuse and probably also de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life and a whole raft of fascinating critical writing (Steve Pile's The Body and The City, Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space, etc..)

Some practitioners - There are Guy Debord, Asger Jorn and the Situationists; Constant Niewenhuys's New Babylon, which is the situationist city again, (see also Michael Sadler's book The Situationist City on this) .

More of our own time, I find Tim Brennan's work always interesting; also there is Sophie Calle's Suite Venitienne; then also the Canadian artist, Janet Cardiff (tho' I find her less interesting, the piece I came across tending to play into stereotypes of the London East End);

'City walking' will also bring up web references as should 'urbanism'.

Good luck, hope this helps!

Helen Scalway

How helpful that was. I owe Helen a greetings card at least. And Jane. And Lawrence Levi. I am going to print all of my internet journal entries that relate to this project as evidence of notes. I will ask five different people about how walking interferes with their artistic activities via email or standard-issue talking.