Walking the Walk: Linda K. Johnson at Dance: before, after, during

by Linda Wysong

“ Like walking, dancing is its own kind of passage through the world and thus the two activities are naturally linked for me. Dancing is just fancy walking.” —Linda K. Johnson

Linda K. Johnson,  drawing, natural charcoal, 2005

Linda K. Johnson walks to know. Walking connects the body and the mind and is at the core of her creative process. In the exhibition, Dance: before, after, during, she is represented by work from her 2005 residency at Caldera and Satellite, a dance commissioned for the Marylhurst show. Both are anchored in the act of walking and the passage of time.

The charred landscape left by the Booth and Bear Butte Complex Fire (2003) is the focus of her large charcoal drawings entitled, what remains…. Requiem. Connecting with place, they are made from the actual physical remnants of the burnt forest and are charged with her personal movement. The drawings are expressive abstractions that correlate to Johnson’s emotional response to walking the damaged landscape. Building on the vocabulary of artists such as Franz Kline, the drawings have a universal quality that starts with the personal and moves toward the archetypal.

Walking can be a solitary activity but it is also an opportunity to connect with the larger world. The urban flaneur and the hiker are each involved in a mix of solitary observation and community engagement. The performative character of walking frequently transforms a private activity into public expression. Linda K. Johnson has pursued walking both as a personal practice and as public art since 1991.  We collaborated on Intersection a performance/sculpture in the middle of SW Broadway that included a pedestrian “walk through” every three hours.

In the same year Linda K. created Finding the Forest, a participatory performance piece along a 3½ mile loop in Portland’s Forest Park. During a beautiful fall weekend in October, viewers became participants by walking the Holman and Wildwood trails. Each walker composed their own experience as they encountered members of the Pedestrian Choir and the other invited dancers, musicians and visual artists who made installations and performed along the loop. Linda K. recruited and trained the Pedestrian Movement Choir, a group of individuals who honed their walking awareness into art. They performed with focus and intentionality responding to the trees, the sunlight, the visual installations and the echoing music. Finding the Forest opened many eyes to walking and stopping as a way to appreciate our own physicality and to interpret place.

Satellite is a dance performance that grew out of the “Walking Score for 75 friends or 150 feet”. Linda K. Johnson mailed solicitations in the form of typed instructions asking each participant to take a walk of “a duration, distance and environment that is pleasing to you”.  The instructions continue with directions to gather “bits of the natural world, detritus, oddities, etc … as they magnetize your attention.” Participants were asked to deposit their finds in an envelope and place them in the mail. The contents of these small wax bags are the source and inspiration for the dance.

Satellite is a composition that takes many contributions and transforms them into a series of discrete episodes. It is intriguing to see how Linda K. Johnson absorbs and reconfigures the material. Her expressive movement vocabulary filters the disjunctive sources to create a unified yet quixotic and humorous collage. The cascading elements produce a joyful sense of discovery within the ordinary.

Composed by Gretchen Jude, the music for Satellite is sourced from Jude’s own series of walks. The sound and movement follow the principle of independence frequently employed by Merce Cunningham and John Cage. The score of the dance is developed without knowledge of or regard for the music composition and vice versa. They are created independently and are then performed simultaneously, encouraging happy accidents and interesting juxtapositions. Ms Jude’s rigorously adhered to the concept of the “Walking Score for Satellite” and took 75 walks to collect the material for the sound composition. Her ambulations must have been near the beach because seagull calls occur frequently, creating a contrast with the gallery setting. The fact that the walks by Johnson, Jude, and each of the participants were taken at different times and locations is key to the final piece. The diverse sources result in an overall performance that evokes a slightly fractured internal dialog. The setting of the performance, in the Art Gym, also encourages a shift from geography to experience.

Satellite the dance, like the object hurtling through space has a central orbit rooted in Linda K. Johnson’s own movement language. It is a vocabulary that includes snippets of modern dance with a controlled pedestrian awkwardness and a unique rhythm. The unexpected objects: flowers, stones, and large plastic bag, all shift the focus from the abstract to the concrete. The observer recalls the collection sacks and wonders about their origin and adds his/her own memories.

Walking without a goal is a rare and wonderful experience that opens the senses and ties us to each other. The act of walking is a way of connecting public space with private experience, it poses questions about how the physical shapes our consciousness and influences the interpretation of images. It is a valuable practice that should not be under rated in our fast paced postindustrial world.

Dance: before, after, during is presented by the Marylhurst’s Art Gym. Curated by Terri Hopkins, the show also includes the work of Linda Austin and Tahni Holt, as well as archival footage of Portland dance performances in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. There are additional performances by Susan Banyas on April 30th and May 14th. Open April 4 – May 15, 2011.

Note: This article is a continuation of Linda Wysong’s investigation of walking that began with the essay on Maria T.D. Inocencio, “It is like this Every Day”.  All comments on walking as an artistic practice and as a way to think about public space and art in public are welcome.