Hamburg, Wandsbek Market
Wednesday, May 8, 2015,
1:00 p.m.,
Traffic island at a busy intersection.
A man is walking in place.
He is not a mime, merely pretending to walk. He is not someone who cleverly disguises a stride, not someone who forces himself to walk in one spot and only pretends to move forward.
He is actually striding briskly forward!
And he is sweating.
His gaze is fixed straight ahead.
He does not respond to being spoken to by passersby.
A stoic man.
He walks unwaveringly straight ahead, incessantly, without making any progress.
Nothing more, but also nothing less.
He persistently places one foot in front of the other.
There is no standstill.
He walks and walks and walks and walks and walks...
After an hour and a half, still no standstill.
No change of location.
A tireless forward movement in place.
Sometimes he supports his upright gait with a pendulum-like movement of his arms, timed with his stride; sometimes he crosses them behind his back.
He walks briskly.
And he walks two meters and forty centimeters above the street.
It's not an optical illusion, a magic trick, or manipulation with hidden projectors. No fake backgrounds, no green screen technology.
The man is really walking, indeed striding purposefully forward. And he's walking in place.
He's not floating in the air, not hanging from a rope, his legs aren't dangling freely above the roofs of the cars or the precipice of the street.
He walks with both feet on solid ground. The steps of his feet drum their uniform rhythm without pause on the roof of a rectangular concrete box with a door.
A transformer substation? A storage shed for street cleaning? Has it always been there?
No police officer stops him.
Is this guy allowed to do that? Just walk without moving forward? Without budging an inch?
He's walking above(!) public space, above(!) the traffic island of a busy intersection at the market in Hamburg-Wandsbek – two meters and forty centimeters above the ground.
No vendor is charging admission to the bewildered passersby. There's no hat, violin case, cash register, or anything like that.
The man's gait is powerful, expressing purpose.
He walks forward, in the direction of the street. Seemingly unstoppable; nothing stands in his way, nothing distracts him from his steady stride. No honking, no bicycle bells, no laughter, no "Hey you up there! What's that all about? What are you doing?" seems to reach him above the heads of the pedestrians. And yet, he doesn't move forward.
His body frozen in the same spot, his steps on the roof of the transformer station relentlessly reach out towards the street.
The exertion eventually brings sweat to his brow. It is the exertion of tireless walking, seemingly without a goal but itself. No progress.
Walking without progress.
A metaphor for delusional progress, having lost sight of its goal?
An image of restless movement?
A metaphor for our times? Moving on despite everything?
An advertisement for energy conservation? An anti-car advocate?
A symbol of progress or the meaninglessness of life?
Is a Buddhist trying to show that the journey itself is the destination?
Walking and being seen?
A dialectical deceleration of the frenetic postmodern era?
Is this art?
The pedestrian above offers no answer. There is no sign anywhere. No political goal is being brought to mind. No product is being advertised. No artist has left a signature. Not on the "transformer station," not on the walker, not in the surroundings. No clue, not the slightest, anywhere. Cell phones are thrust at the walker from all directions: The incomprehensible is captured, preserved, and made tangible through photography and filming, using the fetish of modernity. Like the priest under the canopy of a Corpus Christi procession, the monstrance of modernity is held before the face and directed at the one who simply walks. He is incorporated into the object of everyday worship. The one who simply walks ceaselessly and walks and walks and walks, the miracle - the embodiment of meaninglessness - is digested. Digested through the slightest touch of a glittering illusion of experienced reality. No further action required. A walker is digested into bits and bytes, into .jpg, .tiff, .giff, .mov, .mp4...; excreted as radio signals from MMS, SMS...

A man strides two meters and forty centimeters above a busy intersection in Hamburg Wandsbek, his gaze fixed, seemingly unaffected by all external influences, questions, and accusations, indifferent to the futility of his actions, moving uniformly, ceaselessly, purposefully, and swiftly - in place.

A man strides two meters and forty centimeters above a busy intersection in Hamburg Wandsbek, seemingly unaffected by all external influences, questions, and accusations, indifferent to the futility of his actions, moving uniformly, ceaselessly, purposefully, and swiftly—in place.
What does this tell us?

It tells us that a man, standing two meters and forty centimeters tall, with a steady, purposeful gaze, stands above a busy intersection in Hamburg-Wandsbek, seemingly unaffected by all external influences, questions, and accusations, indifferent to the futility of his actions, striding uniformly, relentlessly, purposefully, and swiftly forward - in place.

Isn't that enough?

Cf. Project documentation No. 8: Mr. Individual, walking

Siegfried Reusch
http://www.derblauereiter.de