WALKING KAILASH: AN INVITATIONAL PROJECT
Published by 208 Press, Portland, ME, 2020 with foreword by Robert Thurman and contributions by Maysey Craddock, Rebecca Duclos / David K. Ross, Angela Ellsworth (Museum of Walking), Tamar El Or, Alina Gallo, Ann Hamilton, Alison Hildreth, Gerhardt Knodel, Jane Lackey, Joan Livingstone, Barbara Lounder, Daniel McCusker, Marina Miliu Theocharaki, Julie Poitras Santos (Platform Project Walks), Ernesto Pujol, Nandita Raman, Gordon Sasaki, Katherine Trimble, and Shoshannah White
The idea for this performative walking project came after traveling halfway around the world to collect water from a sacred lake and bringing it home in a bottle. In a remote area of Western Tibet, on the pilgrimage route circling the sacred mountain of Kailash, at an elevation where catching your breath is the imperative action, is an emerald freshwater lake called Lake of Compassion. In 2006, I set out with a small group of pilgrims from the Tibet House US, lead by Tibetan scholar and great champion of Tibetan culture, Robert Thurman, to circumambulate this mountain, a pilgrimage that Hindus and Buddhists alike believe will erase the sins of a lifetime and bring spiritual freedom.
What drew me to this group of dedicated seekers were the questions: What makes place sacred? How is a pilgrim's intentions formed? What is the difference between a performative walk with intention vs. a walk of pragmatic necessity? The pilgrimage tradition is a form of performative walking in search of something nameless, obscure and intangible. It can be a sincere gesture of compassion done for the sake of another or for the personal transformation of oneself. It can take years, it can take moments. Each destination requires its own time. In the process one develops a heightened sense of awareness. Ann Bogart, in her book And Then You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World speaks of putting our lives into the service of what we value the most and that by doing so these actions will engender other values and beliefs. She writes, “through engagement, things happen. Movement is all.” In our case, the high altitude amplified an awareness of the body. Each step of the route, marked by many, over centuries became a marker between the present moment and some unknown future.
Read the full project description
Read '“Walking As An Alternative Art” in PAJ, MIT Press, 2020
Read “Paper Sample: momiINDIANA for Katarina Weslien” in Hand Papermaking
Read “Paper as Textile” by Andrea Peterson at Surface Design Association
Purchase a copy of Walking Kailash: An Invitiational Project
