Walking the Earth is a lifelong project that I started in Iceland in 2013, meditating on how ‘space’ becomes ‘place’ when imbued with our presence. It will be completed the day I cease to exist. French philosopher Michel de Certeau argued that the practice of walking is analogous to the ‘speech act’ and can also be understood to create a kind of ‘spacing’ or syntax in relation to how things are encountered. Walking and travel are described as a form of ‘enunciation’ that carries the possibility of breathing life, introducing a temporal beat or narrative.
Walking the Earth: Oregon is an intimate portrait of a human figure walking through all nine ecoregions of Oregon, from the Willamette Valley to the Columbia Plateau. The video consists of 54 vertical landscapes, each depicting a record of the artist walking along the horizon line. The nature walks begin at dawn and culminate at dusk. The ecoregions depicted are (from left to right): Near Shore, Coastal Range, Willamette Valley, Klamath Mountains, West Cascades, East Cascades, Columbia Plateau, Blue Mountains, and North Basin & Range.
