2015

These elusive imaginings were first expressed visually as a performance artwork during the Australian National University’s Open Day, 2000. In a courtyard beside the Ceramics Workshop, School of Art, I presented the work, Force of Habit, to a gathering of twenty onlookers. I entered the courtyard carrying a briefcase as if I was walking to work. I approached a white plinth positioned in front of a brick wall that defined the rear of the courtyard space. I mounted the plinth and, with its top nestled in the small of my back, assumed an exaggerated walking pose at odds with gravity – feet, arms and briefcase flung into the air. I held this pose for as long as I could – probably for about a minute. Gradually my muscles fatigued and my body slowly collapsed to slump over either side of the plinth. I dismounted and walked from the courtyard.

The image of my exaggerated walking pose presented on the plinth alluded to the possibility of a previous occupation of that particular point in the Solar System - possibly walking to work. What struck me as I undertook this performance was a consciousness of my presence in the Solar System. I imagined myself hurtling through space on my plinth – a Solar System traveller hiking along despite my illusory stationary pose. For my next move I imagined my body in strident walking pose suspended in front of the Capital Hill Unconformity, a stunning geological formation of exposed sedimentary strata featured on either side of Canberra’s State Circle. Wires supporting my body would allow for an extended performance – during peak hour traffic. I searched Canberra’s creative arts calendar for a suitable umbrella event.

His work prompted a consciousness in the group of our place in the Universe and associated discussions. For me, this revived interest in my personal trajectory in the Solar System and, with assistance from Bill, I photographically documented several works that built on my artistic efforts from a decade earlier to visually express a consciousness of moving through Universal space. The first work we did was a ninety second video performance on a rock platform jutting into the Tasman Sea at Kioloa, New South. I assumed a pose that mimicked what I might have been doing last time I was cruising the same vicinity relative to the Sun - a revolution or two ago. I imagined that I was orientated differently and walking to work with briefcase in hand. Incidentally, I had calculated that if I held my walking pose for a minute I would travel about 1,800 km through space relative to the Sun. As I struggled to attain and hold my pose I found myself reflecting on this cosmic state of affairs.

At a show and tell that evening about the day’s creative achievements I showed the group the video Bill had taken of my performance. Drawing on the ensuing discussion, I began to conceptualise my action in a slightly different way. Rather than trying to enact what I may have been doing as the revolution of the Earth around the Sun brings me back to a precinct previously occupied, I began to see a one-minute, exaggerated walking pose at odds with gravity as a ‘Solar System Walk’, making a conscious, visual reference to my continual trajectory through the Solar System courtesy of planet Earth travelling at approximately 1,800 kilometres per minute. With repeated performances over the next week I began to focus on my place in the Solar System during the one-minute action and reflect on the significance of planet Earth. Conscious of hurtling through the vast expanse of the Solar System made me realise that the Earth is precious real estate – something easily forgotten during our daily lives on land or sea. We need to become good Solurban citizens!

Earth would slip away beneath me in a planetary manoeuvre gracefully governed by the combined effects of its axis rotation and its elliptical revolution around the Sun. The American West would contract within a single cone of 3D vision. This was the imagining that drove me to the edge of the Valley. My departure point for the Monument Valley Solar walk was a small pillow of sandstone, pictured above to the right of the ‘West Mitten’ and behind the ‘STOP’ sign – an instruction I failed to heed. This would be a walk of sheer bravado. I did not have the astronomical knowledge to undertake a proper risk assessment. All I could think about was the prospect of just one moment of success and I would be soaring, eagle-like, over shifting ground. I had no clear idea where the walk would end or how I might survive its termination in a place other than my starting point. I positioned my body for the Solar Walk. Marzena operated the camera and shouted the adjustments that I should make to one limb or the other. I obeyed as best I could. I closed my eyes and conjured the Solar System to fit inside my head. I imagined the Sun and its fierce turbulence and tentatively surrendered my body to the power of its attraction. I was taken instantly by its eternal current. Instead of rocketing into the sky (or the Earth plummeting away directly beneath me) as I had naively expected, I shot sideways like a baseball through the gap in the West Mitten. I went into orbit with my bones in tact - just. I did not melt from atmospheric friction as I traversed the troposphere, then the stratosphere. I did not burst into an array of intestinal junk in the rarefied condition of space for I had already lost my breath. There was a moment of elation. I looked back towards Earth. 

The land art of the American West, beautifully articulated in a palette of oxides, dissolved into the blue marble that the planet became as I moved further away. Then I saw the moon. It was giant and growing more so. I was in line for a collision. Its pocked surface filled my vision. Each crater vying to catch me. I instinctively took the foetal position to enhance my chance of survival, which was nil. I imagined my impact crater providing entertainment at every astronomical society AGM. I flung out my arms and bit the dust. I spat like a born-again volcano. Courtesy of my peripheral vision which was working extremely well, I could see Marzena, a conquistador in the New World protecting my video camera from a small group of onlookers. I realised I was on show. I composed my self and re-established decorum as a Solar walker aligning my dusted trousers and vest. My second ascent of the sandstone outcrop behind the STOP sign was interrupted by a lady who wasn’t little, or old, but very curious as to what I was up to. Her interrogative remarks magnetised others within earshot and an audience gathered around me. Confessing that I was a visual-artist-at-work was probably a sufficient reply; but I did not stop there. I delivered a crash course in walking the Solar System that literally articulated what my captives had presumably witnessed. “The reason I’m doing it”, I explained some more (I always answer the ‘Why?’ question without being asked), “is to provoke conversations such as this one”. In a beat I put a case for leaving coal in the ground and urged everyone to unequivocally disapprove of geo-engineering responses to climate change. At that point my audience became a forum and we got down to business. 

In the first moments of the Imaginarium Solar Walk I will transfer my gravitational allegiance to the Sun and succumb like a smitten disciple to its greater heavenly body. The Earth will slip away beneath me. Travelling now at 1,800 kms per minute relative to the Earth it will be possible for the mind’s eye to look back at the planet from an extraordinary vantage point. That’s the theory. My intention is to Solar Walk across the Earth heading a tad south of east to reach the North Island of New Zealand and the volcanic fields near Auckland; or, allowing for a margin of error, to Walk over the calderas in the Rotorua Basin. I’ll need to Walk for at least 90 seconds to get there. It will be night on arrival. All I require is one, restless, dilating vent through which to glimpse the mantle of our planet glowing like the eye of a tiger. ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright’. Recalling William Blake’s poem bristled my skin. I moved quickly to ensure the Solar Walk would be perfectly timed. I borrowed a plynth from the School of Art. I set-up a launch pad beside the Belconnen Arts Centre. Responding to the curatorial theme, I changed my mind into that of a Solurban citizen - a creature of the Solar System: part Earthling – part Cosmopolitan. I launched my adventure.

There was, as in 2011, instant chaos in terms of my plan. I went west instead of east. A consequence of my navigational incompetence. In an awkward attempt to abort my trajectory by breaking away from the Sun’s gravitational clutches I was flung to the north. I assumed the shape of a boomerang so that I might return home. It worked. My path became elliptical. It arched back towards Canberra over Narrabri, then Boggabri and Gunnedah - towns that are hard to recognise while swishing around in the stratosphere. However the ghastly Whitehaven Coal mine, nearby at Maules Creek, confirmed their identity. Huge machinery was gouging into the precious Leard State Forest to exploit the Earth’s carbon-rich underbelly. An indefensible, immoral raid on Earth’s life savings. Was this to be my ‘volcano’!? My view into the Earth!? This toxic lesion of our making!? I landed in a natural depression back at Belconnen. It didn’t take long for spirits to be uplifted for I’m planning another Solar Walk as part of the Imaginarium exhibition. I would love you to join me. It’s a traditional Solar Walk to check-out the vast expanses of the Universe, to reaffirm the preciousness of Earth and, in this latter respect, to walk-out in protest at the mining of Earth for coal.

The Solar walkers for COP21 adopted a strident walking pose for one, silent, still, contemplative minute to traverse the Solar System together covering more than a thousand miles (approx 1,800 km) relative to the Sun. No one got lost. Everyone returned from the Solar walk as a confirmed Solurban citizen convinced of the priceless real estate value of our planet. “The Solar System Walk is a contemplative performance in which the Solar walker affirms the environmental health of planet Earth as essential for the preservation of our humanity”, John Reid said.

Photographs will be sent as an aesthetic visual message of aspiration and hope from the Solurban citizens of Oceanside, Pittsburgh and Albuquerque to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference via submission to the associated art and cultural program, ArtCOP21 and its web site.

New Zealand presented to me a wonderful opportunity to undertake an Advanced SolarSystem Walk which involves travelling primarily under the influence of the Sun’s gravity.The first Solar Walk of this kind was in Utah,USA, at Monument Valley - Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii in Navajo - in 2011. It turned out that I was on course to collide with the Moon. Not that I could have walked that far but I bailed out none the less. The second Walk took place in the Australian Capital Territory two years later. By making an allegiance with the Sun - requiring an enormous feat of concentration on my part - I was hoping to jettison, courtesy of the Sun’s gravity, in a low arc over New Zealand and after about 90 seconds look into the Earth’s core through volcanic wounds in the crust that are prevalent in the North Island. I went the wrong way soaring out of control into northern New South Wales. My aim on this occasion in New Zealand was to take a leap of imagination to about ten thousand metres - straight up. At that point above the Southern Alps I would desert the Earth and its powerful attraction by fixating on the Sun and watch the Earth roll away from the combined effects of its merry rotation about its axis and its resolute orbit about my new, shining star. The stroke of genius lay in the fact that I had no firm destination. I could dodge and weave at will. Nothing could go wrong. I could revel in space.

Despite this guarantee, it was undeniably scary to see one’s home leave you at 1,800 kilometres a minute. A minute was long enough to want to return to Earth. Space is not a place. Uncomfortable as it was, a large rock in the small of the back felt mighty fine.

Dunedin Cool. A lens of Solar Walkers were fully briefed on the basic techniques and rationale of Solar System Walking. They are: 1 Assume an exaggerated walking posture; 2 Close eyes and hold the walking position for one minute; 3 During the one-minute Walk, contemplate the fact that you are being propelled through space on planet Earth at 1,800 km per minute relative to the Sun; 4 Imagine the vast expanse of the Universe and appreciate the real estate value Earth; 5 Terminate the Solar Walk and adjust to local scale; 6 As a confirmed Solurban Citizen, reaffirm your responsibility to preserve life on Earth. There is no planet B. Much of the ground of King’s High School was underwater in the 2015 Dunedin floods. More than 1,000 properties were also affected by flood waters. Water levels rose from the combined effects of heavy rain, high tides and poor drainage infrastructure - a coincidence of events that foreshadow future climate change impacts on South Dunedin’s suburbs.

With lights in outstretched hands to illuminate the strident pose characteristic of Solar Walking, the participants undertook a thin spiral journey in relation to the Sun and, for one silent minute, contemplated the vast expanse of the Universe.

The communal aesthetic experience conferred upon each individual walker Solurban Citizenship Status, and with it, came acknowledgement of the priceless real estate value of our planet.