Following Walter Benjamin's famous description on the flaneur as someone who goes ‘botanising on the asphalt’ (1934) - the work accompanied by a light bulb and a chalk, brings forward an ephemeral and emotional imprint of poetry within site. The artist explores the poetics and politics of his method of walking with the object of light and chalk, highlighting aspects of senses, ritual, memory and city. Light Walks brings forward a walking-thinking-writing oscillation, an emerging ritual between the artist and the following public. The light bulb becomes a semiotic object of artist’s thought while chalk reveals a performative and haptic aspect of consciousness. Light Walks constituted an artwork in the arts-based Postdoc of the artist around themes of performance/site/technology and Geohumanities (IKY State Scholarship, 2017-2019).

Performance, custom-made light bulb, white chalk

Technical: HD video, colour, stereo sound, English subtitles

Year: 2016

Concept – Performance – Creation: Bill Psarras

Documentation filming: Dimitris Dermousis

Photo documentation: N. Panagiotopoulou, N. Charitonidou, G. Besleme

The performance/work (22/9 and 2/10) was part of the exhibition OUT(TOPIAS): Performance and Public Space, at The Benaki Museum

Artwork: https://vimeo.com/281848467 Performance teaser: https://vimeo.com/184488743