This research offers a comprehensive inquiry into the manifold dimensions of walking, structured across three central axes that unfold the scope of its intellectual and artistic relevance. Firstly, it provides a theoretical framework that traces the origins of bipedalism in human evolution and examines how walking shaped cognitive development, perception of space, symbolic thought and existential consciousness. Drawing on existentialist and phenomenological philosophy, as well as sociology, neurology and anthropology, it demonstrates that walking constitutes an embodied form of knowledge that reconnects humans with their corporeality and with the lived environment. Secondly, it explores the artistic and cultural practices of walking, focusing on avant-garde movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Lettrism and Situationism, alongside architects and contemporary walking artists including Francesco Careri, Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, herman de vries and Francis Alÿs. Through these case studies, walking is revealed as a radical artistic methodology, a performative intervention in public space and a critical tool for reimagining urban and natural landscapes. Thirdly, it presents a body of original artistic projects that embody the creative potential of walking, ranging from walking guides, sound cartographies and land art installations to performative workshops, sculptures, photographs and paintings. Together these works reaffirm walking as a practice that stimulates imagination, nurtures relational networks, enhances ecological awareness and opens new poetic forms of inhabiting the world. Ultimately, the study positions walking as an aesthetic, social and spiritual act that resists the alienation of modern sedentary life and reclaims a more reflective, imaginative and transformative engagement with space and time.
Apollonio, L. (2022). The Creative Potential of Walking: A Theoretical and Artistic Research for its Revaluation (Doctoral dissertation, University of Granada). Directed by F. García Gil & M. Garrido Román.
