Walk (Square) forms part of an ongoing series of projects investigating collective gestures or situations enacted in public such as walking, dancing or celebrating. The work extends a practice based on an analysis of the construction of individual and collective identities and their performative representation through photography and moving image. Walking en masse—whether it be in processions, pilgrimages, in carnival or protest marches—forms the starting point for this video work made with 1000 Hamburg kids. Drawn into the centre of the city from all directions, with art as the 'Pied Piper', the work refers to current socio-political situations of protest as well as to recent research across different disciplines into the meanings of groups and crowds. The piece questions whether the act of walking may constitute a ‘form of speech’. On the square in front of Hamburg’s contemporary art museum a crowd of kids performs a simple walking choreography, based on Bruce Nauman’s video Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967– 1968, creating a shimmering form of movement that briefly produces a moment of collectivity and visual coherence before breaking apart.
