Valérie Roberge: Walking as a Way of Inhabiting

The presentation is influenced mostly by Frédéric Gros’ book, „Marcher, une philosophie“, and by Tomas Espedal’s book „Tramp: Or the Art of Living a Wild and Poetic Life“. The authors give different examples of walkers and thinkers but they both insist on the effects of walking on the individual. To follow their lead, the presentation will explore different kinds of walks and what they could mean to us in terms of transforming our habits and our ways of inhabiting our lives . What does it mean to be out there walking? How does the act of walking change the way we perceive the world or even what the world gives to us? Is our own presence in the world modified when we are walking? We will also examine how various modifications of walking (flexibility, rhytm, walking with someone else vs. walking on our own) influences our thinking.