The Narrative of Walking – Artistically Exploring Cities through Audio Walks

Abstract

This article will discuss artistic audio walks as a contemporary approach to exploring cities and their history from a different perspective. It will compare three different approaches in three projects dealing with audio walks, distinguishing between artistic audio walks and touristic audio guides in museums and cities. Audio guides introduce listeners to a place through story telling. At the same time, other approaches towards making cities more visible artistically are gaining prominence. Walking through places with an audio guide is nothing new. This article shows that audio walks are not only guiding people through urban spaces but are artistically approaching listeners by making them (re-)act. It also demonstrates that walks like Johanna Mayrhofer’s “Working Borders”, the walking tours of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, and the experience of Janet Cardiff’s audio walks all send a message to the listener, while giving them the chance to act and to perform in a spatial context mediated through the audio walks. The experience of an artistic audio walk itself educates the listener—either on a specific topic or about themselves.