Walk this Way: the Urban Interventions of Francis Alÿs and Diane Borsato

Résumé du livre

This thesis examines the act of walking in the contemporary performance art of Francis Alys̈ and Diane Borsato. Theorized as a way for each artist to achieve an unmediated bodily engagement with the morphology of the city, this thesis demonstrates how walking can be employed as an artistic act, as well as mode of cultural resistance that reinvigorates everyday life with moments of poetic creativity. This research aims to elucidate the political, aesthetic and theoretical implications of Borsato and Alys̈'s work. Drawing firstly on theories of urbanism put forth the by the Situationist International, secondly on Michel de Certeau's philosophies on everyday life, and finally on Patrice Loubier and Kathleen Ritter's concept of the furtive practice, Alys̈ and Borsato's interventions are shown to exist at once within the long art-historical tradition of the artist-as-walker, and on the cusp of one of the newest developments in contemporary art. Through the examination of the urban interventions of Francis Alys̈ and Diane Borsato, the subversive, creative and critical potential of walking will also be revealed.