Walking in Air

Last year we developed a project entitled ‘Walking in Air’ concerning the passage of the walking body through air, taking up the challenge of anthropologist Tim Ingold’s ‘thinking in movement’. Walking, in this view, is more than mere locomotion. It is a mode of thinking and knowing. We began planning the project in spring 2020, shortly before an airborne virus would bring the world as we know it to a halt. While waiting for the opportunity to put our project into practice with our collaborators, we did some preliminary ‘walking in air’ fieldwork. Each of us, on the same afternoon in January 2021, embarked on a separate walk in south London. The following collaborative text narrates aspects of our thinking and our walking.