Performing the Line marks a shift in my artistic research. Previously I was foremost engaged in physical play and dance improvisation, in animal becomings, now I become increasingly engaged with the sea, with fluidity, with water, and sea life. The work underneath is influenced by the work of Tim Ingold, Lines, and Richard Long's work 'A Line Made by Walking (1967).
IJmuiden, 28 May 2021
In this artistic exploration, my goal is to immerse myself in the concept of living lines, as articulated by Tim Ingold, by drawing inspiration from Richard Long's seminal work, 'A Line made by Walking'. Created in 1967, this piece marked Long's debut as an artist while he was studying at St Martin's School of Art in London. The performance involved Long taking a train from London's Waterloo station towards the southeast, disembarking after 20 minutes, and proceeding on foot until he reached an open, nondescript field. This field then served as the canvas for his performative exploration, setting the stage for a deeper examination of the living line concept.
Tim Ingold (2016) states that there are two ways in which an organism can leave traces on solid surfaces: additive and reductive. Additive lines are lines that are added to the surface. The lines form a new layer on top of the existing surface. Examples of additive lines are lines drawn with paint, charcoal, tape. Reductive lines on the other hand are lines that are cut into the surface (for example with the hands, a spade, a rake, a ploughshare). My lines fall under the last category.
Tim Ingold (2016) makes another distinction, namely between the active/authentic line that has no clear beginning or end and the line that consists of a chain of dots. The first line is a living line, a line that “goes out for a walk, that develops freely and in its own time” (Klee, in Ingold, 2016, p. 75). The second line is a succession of points or dots, straight and regular, pre-determinate and constructed from beginning to end. The first line is a trail, the second line is a route.
This artistic research takes the first line (which from now on is referred to as the ‘living line’) as its point of departure. Through the re-enactment of Long’s art work, I try to gain an embodied understanding of living lines as a way of interacting with the world in a sensory-tactile way. Re-enactment is used here as a tool not to re-construct the original artwork as truthful as possible, but to grasp creative potential that is still present in the work (Lepecki, 2010). I am thus not interested in an exact copy of Long’s artwork. The artwork serves as a departure point, a trail to follow, yet also opening up to whatever happens in the moment.
Friday, the 28th of May 2021. I take the bus to Ijmuiden Beach, a trip of 45 minutes that brings me from the heart of Amsterdam to the long sandy beaches of the North Sea. Just like Richard Long, I leave the hectic of urban life behind me – although not entirely because Ijmuiden is known for its blast furnaces. The last 20 minutes, I am pretty much alone. Hardly any-one takes the bus to Ijmuiden beach, especially not on a weekday. I get out of the bus, and walk to the beach. It is a cloudy day, and except for some dogwalkers, the beach is deserted. I walk to the dunes, find a place without too many tracks and trails and get to work.
I walk upon and down an imaginary line for a while, but this action does not lead to satisfying results. There is no clear trail, probably because the sand is quite dry and thin, and as result my footsteps don’t leave traces behind. I decide to use a small wooden stick (that I accidentally stumbled upon) – which is not without danger. Dogs strongly react to the stick: they bark at me and one dog even attacks me. Although you wouldn’t necessarily say so, it is a hard work. I decide to draw several lines: from here to there, from the dunes to the wooden beach pole, from the dunes straight to the sea (which is a couple of hundred meters away) – and it takes me a couple of hours. Because I want to carve out a real, visible line, I have to repeat the process a couple of times.
Passersby react to my labour. Some stand still and observe the process, some make pictures and two women comment that ‘it is not really a straight line’. They do make a point. I have given myself the strict assignment to make a straight, regular line but this seems to be an impossible job. The stick is one of the major problems: it is only 16 inches long and as a result I have to bend deep down. In this bending position I cannot keep (visually) track of the line. In order to overcome this, I pause every other step. I draw invisible lines between where I started and where I am heading to. It doesn’t work. The line curves, it wanders around. Indeed, it goes out for a walk, and it becomes (painfully) clear that this living line doesn’t care at all about Euclidian geometry.
John Ruskin states that it is impossible “to draw a line without any curvature or variety of direction” (in Ingold, 2016, p.165-166). Of course, this problem would be solved if you would use a ruler. However, living lines – the lines that are drawn with the body without the use of technical aids – are everything but straight. They curve and bend. They are irregular. This is because living lines always incorporate element of risk. In contrast, artificial lines (such as printed lines) are ‘lines of certainty’: their trajectory is determined on forehand. Living lines unfold in the process, they are paced out along the surface. Ingold (2016) explains why it is impossible to carve out a straight line in the sand: “All along the path, he has to attend to his path in relation to the ever-changing vistas and horizons as he proceeds. […] That is why some degree of twisting or bending is inevitable.” (p. 166)
I have two observations. First of all, there seems to be a relation between the length of the line and its assumed straightness. The lines seem perhaps straight but this is an illusion of the eye. Distance/length seems to annihilate (at least to a certain point) the bending and curving. I wonder: Could it be possible that each curve eventually turns into a straight line when we distance ourselves from it? We could also inverse this thought by saying that every intimate line is a curved line.
My second observation is that the living line is continuous and discontinuous at once. The living line seems to be continuous and uninterrupted, while in fact it is a patchwork of short lines. After every one or two steps I pause, and in this shifting from one place to the other, the process of drawing is interrupted. These transverse movements of the body are no part of the act of writing; they serve only to transport the wooden stick from one place to the following place (Ingold, 2016). The living line thus consists of discrete movements rather than of a continuous trail. However, as Ingold argues, the traces of the bodily movements may be discontinuous but “the movement that generates them is a continuous one that tolerates no interruption” (2016, p.95). In other words, just as in walking, the movement does not stop when I lift the stick from the ground. The traces “are not broken off from the line of movement but enplanted along it” (p.96).