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Walking as an Instrument, 2024
Artistic Research at Aqtushetii Residency
Supported by Mondriaan Fonds
During my residency at AqTushetii, I developed the artistic research Walking as an Instrument, for which I explored the cultural phenomenon of ‘transhumance’: the centuries-old seasonal migration of livestock and herders between high- and low-altitude areas. AqTushetii is located in Omalo, in the remote mountainous region of Tusheti National Park in Georgia—a place where landscape, sun, light, clouds, and ritual are inextricably intertwined. In winter, Tusheti is almost completely cut off by snow. Permanent habitation at high altitudes is then impossible. Within this geographical and cultural context, I investigated how this migration functions as a carrier of knowledge, tradition, and collective memory.
By walking alongside shepherds every day for a month, I followed historical and contemporary pastoral routes: paths that have been walked for generations and function as an intangible archive. These routes preserve knowledge not in language or objects, but in repetition, rhythm, physical exertion, and seasonal movement. Walking became my method for experiencing and recording these hidden layers and perspectives, both individually and collectively. The project resulted in a series of analog black-and-white photographs and systematically punched cards, in which the walked paths are captured and to be played back at different speeds.
In the final results, I sought a form that does justice to the experience of transhumance itself. Tusheti revealed itself to me as a magical and overwhelming place of dark, shimmering rock, freezing air, bright sunlight, and almost otherworldly silences devoid of people. I tried to capture that experience by using a special photographic printing technique in Kees Brandenburg’s workshop Polychrome, to add extra materiality, depth, and layering to the images. We worked with his “Zerochrome” technique, which utilizes direct carbon pigment transfer. The process is characterized by a physical, slow and layered creation, built up layer by layer with hand brushed strokes. It creates a beautiful tension between the unpolished movement of the brush and the sharpness and tonality of the photographic image.
See the works Brunva, Moitsa, Siaruli
The footage below shows parts of my research process and walks
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