Opening keynote speech by Dr Hayden Lorimer, Sure Footing.
‘What if we runners take our feet seriously as an imaginative axis? What can they tell us about ourselves, and our movements? Do feet double our account of the running life? What more can they be paired with? In this illustrated talk, I will run with these questions, treating feet as a ledger of life, so redrawing the terms and conditions for self-portraiture.’
Allen Abramson. The Spaces and Strange Attractions of Long-Distance Running. 8-minute paper.
‘When running as a sporting practice unfolded primarily in the athletics stadium, sprints were iconic and marathon was an intriguing after-thought. Over the last three decades, this asymmetry has gone into reverse, with marathon now occupying a noble centre-ground and sprints being pharmacologically undermined. What is the meaning of this reversal? My talk hazards an answer to this question by focusing upon the radically different space in which iconic long-distance running occurs and upon the ‘strange attraction’ which long-distance running (and similarly extreme practices) conspicuously have with charity and the vulnerable.’
Penny Andrews. Sprinting and Identity. 8-minute paper.
‘This presentation will show how training and classification as a T36 cerebral palsy sprinter completely changed my perspective on the social and medical models of disability and my identity as a “disabled” person. I will demonstrate this through both words and performance, as a sprinter, musician and poet. Drills, forms, beats – it’s all disciplining an unruly world.’
Nick Booth and Kris Grint. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham: Philosopher, Auto-Icon, Jogger? Poster.
‘This poster, a collaboration between Kris Grint (Bentham Project, UCL) and Nick Booth (curator, UCL Museums), focuses on the life and death of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the spiritual founder of UCL. In life, Bentham was a fervent believer in the positive relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind, aptly demonstrated by his partaking in preprandial circumgyration, his term for jogging. After death, Bentham willed his body to science, and instructed that his corpse be preserved as the ‘auto-icon’, now on display at UCL. The poster describes Bentham’s ideas on jogging in more detail, illustrated by high-resolution photographs and x-rays of his body.’
Blaž Bajič. Running Free: Bare Feet and Shod Knowledge. 8-minute paper.
‘The paper – still a work-in-progress, a part of an ongoing research – is based on ethnographic fieldwork among barefoot runners in Kranj, a town in northwestern Slovenia. It gives an account of the runners’ conceptualizations of feet, running shoes and the ground. These conceptualizations are not, however, abstract or of a purely mental nature but lived, experienced in and through bodily movements and sensuous relations with the environment. Through an example of a course of the so-called barefoot running the paper addresses how runners have to relearn their running technique, i.e. the technique of running »naturally« , as they see this as a condition of a freer, more sensuous and authentic way of moving around and knowing one’s surroundings.’
Veronique Chance. The Great Orbital Run (2012). Image.
‘The Great Orbital Ultra Run was a solitary run and performance artwork that took place in March 2012 over nine consecutive days around the inside of the M25 London Orbital. Conceived as ‘point- to-point’ run from and to 10 different motel stops along the route, this journey did not follow preconceived ‘paths’ but was about negotiating a route round come what may. The journey was mapped through a continuous stream of images that were relayed live from my mobile phone along with my GPS coordinates. This was projected as a moving image work with sound at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich as part of the exhibition Evil Sport and Ultra Run. This image shows the original route map of the M25 adapted from an AA routemap, with written annotations of proposed motel stops.’
Collectif Totem. The Running City: Discovering the City by Running. 8-minute paper.
‘At the time of the Happening City (Gwiazdzinki, 2009), the importance of running has significantly increased over the past few years in the cities development policies; it has became a key element of their territorial marketing as demonstrated by the several marathons and urbain trails that take place every year all over the planet (New-York, Lyon, Angers…). On the other hand, this points out a new way to discover the city, through exploring and focusing attention on ordinary landscapes and places, placing the gaze at the same level of the performance as the purpose of the race. Thus, the aim of this work is to create a new methodology based on running as a way to explore the urban spaces. The speed of run isinteresting compared to the walk as it requires competences to coping with mobilities constraints related to the material environment. We will present in this talk the experience of the first #CompassRunning we have created in Grenoble, France. During one week, different people took their shoes to create together a map of running using social networks, geocaching and GPS.’
Collectif Totem. #CompassRunningLondon @ #R3Fest. Workshop.
‘The aim is to explore together the surroundings of Run Run Run: An International Festival of Running 1.0 through a running experience. We will use geocaching, social network, GPS and an innovative methodology so as to create a new map of running around Woburn Square. All day long you can take part to this experience! Simply grab a sheet from our partners of #R3Fest, run and share your pics, videos and comments on Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Google + #CompassRunningLondon or by mail at compassrunninglondon@gmail.com ! Meet us during our workshop to talk, share ideas and… run with us!’
Collectif Totem. #CompassRunningGrenoble : the #first @CollectifTotem Experimentation by Running. Video.
‘The video presents the experience of the first #CompassRunning we have created in Grenoble, France. During one week, different people have been invited to take their shoes and run. Starting from a backyard at the University of Grenoble, the runners had to reach points indicated beforehand, by taking paths toward the eight cardinal points. The outcome is a co-created map of running built on pictures, videos, geocaching and GPS, shared through social networks.’
Simon Cook. Do You Have To Be A Runner to Research Running? An insider-outsider 10-minute debate
Running related research and work has been gaining much momentum over the last few years – this festival is a testament to that. This energy often seems to be driven by people who confess to be runners themselves and it rather begs the question as to whether being a runner is prerequisite for researching running. This 10-minute debate/discussion seeks to probe this question and draw out the benefits and negatives of being an insider or an outsider to the practice.
Delegates will be asked to draw on their own experiences to think about questions such as:
- Are you an insider or an outsider?
- How did you come to study running?
- What are the benefits and challenges of being an insider/outsider?
- What does being an insider/outsider conceal and reveal?
- How does researching running change your relationship to the practice and your insider/outsider status?
- Are running-researchers an exclusive community?
- How may the traits of running-research change as it gains popularity and reach in academia?
Vybarr Cregan-Reid. Running – Sport, Exercise, or Historical Re-Enactment? 8-minute paper.
‘To help in answering the question, what is running?, this paper dips into some Tolstoy and Hardy for clarification on what happens to us out on the run. Running, it seems, is many things – sport for some, exercise for others – but almost anyone that regularly does it will tell you that it is something else too. For me, it is much more closely linked to the sensual experience of the arts, and a steadfast reminder of our presentness. Running, like literature, like art, helps us to recall some of the impossible strangeness of what it means to be human.’
Josey Field. Being Entwined: Exploring Experiences of Trail Running and the Reverberating Relationships. 8-minute paper.
‘The embodied relationship that humans share with their environments and the ensuing reverberations of such connections is a valuable area of research. It offers an opening through which to consider the synergy between social and material landscapes, and in doing so allows an application of deliberated cognisance to areas such as civil justice, individual/cultural agency, environmental equilibrium, and well-being. Utilising the medium of outdoor activities (of which trail running was one) this research aimed to: (1) Explore the meaning that young adults (18-30) attributed to their outdoor activities; (2) Understand how they related to the environments within which they were active; (3) Investigate the impact that such interconnections might have upon their relationship with those who care for the land. Within this presentation I will draw from the pluralistic data of 18 young adults, which included techniques such as semi-structured interviews and visual elicitation. In doing so I will explore how, through a process of [co]construction and [re]interpretation that emanated from within their corporeal experience, my participants came to express both an emotive articulation of personal desire and an affective corporeal sensitivity. Subsequently, and illustrated through four prevailing typologies, I shall illuminate the connections between my participants’ emotional desires and affective sensitivities and their narratives of agency, which took form through knowledge of personal practice. Finally I shall conclude with some thoughts concerning the relationship between individual being, agency, and group openness. This research is funded by the ESRC (CASE Studentship) in collaboration with the National Trust.’
Andrew Filmer. On The Move: Action, Location, Relation. Hands-On (and Feet-On)Workshop.
‘This short workshop will explore what sorts of lived experiences endurance running produces for a runner and how we might access and represent these experiences performatively. It draws on my own research examining the intersections between endurance running and contemporary performance practices, durational running performances I’ve made with theatre students at Aberystwyth University, and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s methods for investigating flow states. It will involve a bit of running, a bit of talking, some mobile phones and index cards.’
Kris Grint. The Bentham Run. Running London Tour.
‘Specially commissioned for RUN RUN RUN: A Festival of Running 1.0, this is a short (2.7 mile) jog through central London for all abilities and levels. The Bentham Run takes in six sites of historical importance to the philosopher (and UCL’s spiritual founder) Jeremy Bentham. Stops will include a visit to the auto-icon (Bentham’s preserved corpse), the old University of London, as well as to the site where Bentham’s house once stood in Westminster. Fittingly, the run ends in St James Park, where participants will follow in the footsteps of Bentham himself, who did his own daily jogging here.’
Russell Hitchings. Indoor versus outdoor running. 8-minute paper.
‘My paper will present some results from a recent study in which we sought to examine how urban recreational runners come to find themselves running either indoors on treadmills or outdoors on pavements or paths. Through interviews and accompanied runs we compared how those who generally ran indoors and those who generally did so outside thought about the physical experience, how they came to run in the ways that they did, and how they felt about the idea of running differently. The aim was to speculate on how and where future urban running will happen and how this trajectory may be influenced.’
Amelia Johnstone and Peter Hathaway. Run To Draw. ‘Live’ performance, film, exhibition.
‘This project is a collaboration between Peter, a product designer & Amelia, an illustrator; about running and drawing at the same time. They run and draw because they’re interested in how imagination is invigorated through exercise and adventure. “Pheidippides” is a unique mobile scrolling canvas worn on Peter’s back to allow Amelia to capture eidetic images prompted by surroundings, sensory emotions and imagination whilst running. We believe that creativity can be enhanced by the act of running, charging the mind from the subconscious, enabling us to seize the fleeting marvels of ideas in the moment.’
Courtney Kipps. Running and Medicine. Special Lunchtime Extra Treats: Clinic.
Hayden Lorimer. Sure Footing. Keynote speech.
What if we runners take our feet seriously as an imaginative axis? What can they tell us about ourselves, and our movements? Do feet double our account of the running life? What more can they be paired with? In this illustrated talk, I will run with these questions, treating feet as a ledger of life, so redrawing the terms and conditions for self-portraiture.
Carali McCall. ‘Restraint/Running’, from A Line is a Brea(d)thless Length: Introducing the Physical Act of Running as a Form of Drawing. 5’40” Video.
‘In an area of performance drawing, which considers drawing to be connected to movement through the act of doing and physical activity, my research addresses what it means to use the extreme form of physical activity – running. Using (myself) the runner to articulate an understanding of how the body moves through space and how the physical act of running can be a viable form of drawing, my practice uses the ‘breath’ and the discipline of marathon training. Influenced by the trajectory of performance art in the exploration of resistance, tension, measures of energy and endurance, my work includes a process of adopting Euclid’s definition of the line as a model to explore linear properties beyond conventional mark making.’
Derek McCormack. Running Commentary. 8-minute paper.
‘This short piece engages with questions of running and childhood through a series of vignettes that speak of how the experience of running complicates our relation between spaces, times, and memory.’
Tristan Meecham. FUN RUN. To be presented during chatshow with Gregg Whelan and Tristan Meecham.
‘When the Greek messenger Pheidippides was sent to Athens to announce the Persian’s defeat in the battle of Marathon, he ran the entire distance without stopping, burst into the Athenian assembly and died on the spot. FUN RUN is his story… FUN RUN is not merely homage to Pheidippides, but a riotous site specific spectacle that pushes the limits of endurance. Our fearless hero in tight packed lycra shorts and nipple pasties, runs a gruelling 42kms on a treadmill supported by massive visual effects, a booming soundtrack, a silky-voiced MC and hundreds of performers and athletes from the wider local community. Will he hit the wall or complete his quest?’ Says John Bailey, The Age Newspaper, Australia: ‘And it was fun. What fun. You could hear it from blocks away. But what made this event so curiously subversive was the lack of cues that clued us in that it was Art. Countless passersby wondered what they were watching – a charity event? A corporate stunt? A sporting spectacle? It was all of these things, kind of, or parodies of each. It definitely involved the city in a truly remarkable way, and as the sun set and the runner entered the final leg of the race the atmosphere was electric among onlookers still none the wiser as to why they were even there. A gold medal affair.’
Live Marianne Noven. THIS IS A COUNT DOWN. ‘Live’ performance in 2 parts.
‘this is a piece about being present. this is a piece about running. running my own life, running through exhaustion, running after a world that is speeding, running faster to slow down, running to be here but always moving away from the physical here. i try to understand how to be, here and now but THIS IS A COUNT DOWN and i’m running out of time. we all need to run back to ourselves, to be present, be (a)live. i am (a)Live when i run, if only i could whilst not running too, if only that could happen before we hit 3, 2, 1, zero. THIS IS A COUNT DOWN.’
Live Marianne Noven. Week 3: Running with Eddie Ladd. 4’17” Video.
‘When I started working on “running live” I wrote a list of who I wanted to go for a run with. On the top of the list was Eddie Ladd, so I emailed her. No response. It was her official email so I guess she doesn’t check that very often. I talked to my teacher because she just happen to know Eddie (yeah she’s that cool). She contacted her and the rest is web history; I ended up admiring her even more. Not only as a performer (if you have never seen her work then you really have to) but as a runner (she runs because she wants to be out of doors) and for who she is. She is truly a lovely person. I had such a great time running in the pouring rain and getting thrown off my feet by the howling wind. Not only did I meet her; I ran with her and running is easily in my top three list of how to spend time with people (the two others being drinking coffee and eating).’
Matan Rochlitz and Ivo Gormley The Runners. 11’08” Video.
Pounding the tarmac through the seasons, a band of runners are brazenly challenged with intimate questions as they pace their routes. Liberated from responsibilities, their guards drop dramatically, releasing funny and brutally frank confessions, and weaving a powerful narrative behind the anonymous masses. Accolades include: Official Selection – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013. Honourable Mention – London Short Film Festival 2014. Official Selection – Open City Docs, London 2013. Official Selection – New Orleans Film Festival 2013. Official Selection – Kaohsiung Film Festival, Taiwan 2013. #therunners
Matthew Skinner and Gemma Price. The Evolution of Running: You Have to Walk Before You Can Run. Show + Touch.
‘Bipedality is one of the key features of our human ancestors. Fossil evidence shows us that, since the split from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees, approximately 5-7mya, our ancestors have, at least to some extent, been walking on two feet rather than four. But, it’s not until the emergence of our own Homo genus, around 2mya, that we see the evolution of traits that would allow for long distance running abilities. Scientists form UCL’s Anthropology Department are giving you the chance to get up close and hands-on with fossil casts of our ancestors, those who could run and those who couldn’t, and see the differences for yourself.’
Simson&Volley. Hampstead Heath Oak Apple Run. Drawing. 48 x 32 inches Iron gall ink, silver and gold pigment bound in gum arabic on BFK Rives paper
This work is a map of the pathways where oak galls can be found and celebrates the beauty of the material.
Paviter Singh. The Most Beautiful Thing. 8’20” Video.
‘This is a short trail running video I was part of – it’s been nominated in the Trails In Motion Film Festival 2014.’ The video is directed and produced by Lloyd Belcher, who says: ‘The Most Beautiful Thing [TMBT] is an iconic ultra trail marathon set in the spectacular surroundings of Mount Kinabalu on the Malaysian island of Borneo. This short film piece aimed to not only capture the scenic trails but also the local culture, race history & ethos of the TMBT Ultra Marathon.’
James Steventon. A Song for Eurydice. To be presented during chatshow with Gregg Whelan and Tristan Meecham.
A Song for Eurydice is a running based performance by James Steventon and Jason Singh. ‘My elevated heartbeat is transmitted in real time (via an interface designed by musician and artist Leafcutter John) to vocal sculptor Singh’s live music sequencer. Through a skillful treadmill running performance, the tempo is set by the alternating heart rate. Singh’s live vocal response in turn directly affects the heart rate, setting up a circular, symbiotic relationship where my heart becomes both instrument and perceiving organ. The resulting visual and auditory performance is a live exchange between body and voice, with the control of oxygen common to both.’
Melissa Sutcliffe. The Design And Development Of A Simple Drop Rig To Simulate Impact Loading Patterns Of Running, And Its Use In Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Springs In Running Footwear. Poster.
‘This poster looks at the effectiveness of high density micro-springs in reducing impact forces and vertical loading rates during running. It also addresses one of the challenges in footwear testing which is determining the effects of subtle differences in the design and materials used in running shoes, due to intra and inter subject variability in human running trials. As part of this research a new drop rig testing machine was developed that could replicate both rearfoot and forefoot impact loading during running. It was concluded that the addition of spring damper arrangements in running shoes is worthy of further investigation to protect the foot and lower limb against impacts during running and other sporting activities.’
Kay Tabernacle. Running. Video animation.
‘Running’ is a point of view, hand drawn animation of a (short) fictional run.
Kai Syng Tan. The Runner as a High-Tech-All-In-1-Digital-Compact-Body-Art-Smart-Mobile-Roaming-Device With Killer Apps. Digital Print.
Philip Tan. Vertebrae. 6’25” Video.
‘A champion mindset is all about determination to persevere despite all odds. When a person loses one use of her natural ability, she is forced to become attuned to her other senses. Click here to see how the film was made. This experimental short is my first – and certainly not my last – film.’
Guy Watts/Streetscape. How Running Led to 2 World Records and an Award-Winning Social Enterprise. 8-minute paper.
‘When I began running at the age of 16, with my Brother, I didn’t realise it would be such a huge part of my life. It has fundamentally changed who I am today and what I believe I can achieve. It led to me being one part of the first pairs crew to row across the Indian Ocean and most recently having set up Streetscape, an award winning social enterprise.’
Gavin Weedon. Ecological Adventures in Mud Running: Modernity, Mimesis, Militarization. Poster.
‘What can we learn about about mud running, the ‘extreme’ endurance phenomena popularized by events such as Tough Mudder and the Spartan Race, if we take mud itself as our guide? I present a poster which conceives mud as an immanent enfolding of matter and meaning, both illuminating and partaking in the sticky sociality, primordial mythology, rugged rural masculinity, and militaristic ethos of many mud running events. Allied with political ecology, posthumanism, and studies of endurance, this sketching of my study is intended to convey the complex cultural politics kindled by these ecological entanglements of elemental substance, and embodied practice. Enjoy!’
Ann Grove White. 20.12.52. 8’02”. 8’02” Video.
‘The focus of the work is around the embodiment of ageing. In particular it is about the experience of running as an activity in and for itself, as well as serving as a metaphor for life. Running can occur as something to resist, hard work, scary at times, playful and exciting, empowering, as well as meditative at times. The one constant process throughout, whatever the experience of running, is that I’m growing older, and there’s nothing I can do about that! However, what interests me is how ageing is embodied (within myself) and how I situate myself – back and forth – between different discourses of ageing: between bodily decline and agency.’
Carol Williams. Carol Heading Down The Grand Canyon at S. Kaibab Trail 2012 May. Image.
Carol cannot join us physically at the #r3fest – but she has a good excuse. ‘I wish I could participate in your running conference but am actually running the canyon during that time. This year we return to run rim to rim to rim of Arizona’s grand canyon for the third time. The elevation loss and gain is substantial as we start at nearly 9000feet and go down to 3300 feet and then back up to 9000 then down again and back up to finish all in a single day with all our water and food needed for the entire day on our backs. We run here year round from hot weather (40 degrees C in summer to minus 23 C and colder in winter).’
Richard Wright. How The Squares Are Shaped. 45-minute Running London Tour.
‘I’d like to explore the theme of an active landscape that’s mobile or ‘runs’ with us. To demonstrate this I’ll celebrate the way public engagement and philanthropic values shaped the squares. I’m thinking of movement adjectives that fit. It’s not quite fluid, more lumpy and jolts or sprints, or springs forward then solidifies. So we can be optimistic about the possibility for change and have a fresh view of landscapes and buildings. Gardens can quickly transform, with remarkable results, so they could be thought to be truly fluid and ready to run with us, or a wonderful starting point for wider physical redesign and social mobility.’
Yow Siew Kah. Reward and Recognition: The Singapore Marathon and the Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore. Printed Essay.
‘Mass runs have been held in Singapore at least since the 1970s. Currently, the most popular event is the Standard Chartered Marathon, which started in 2002. As the event is targetted at the masses, it attracts what some runners consider an overly large number of participants. By examining letters published in the newspapers in the 1980s, the essay shows that the participation numbers that we see today are shaped in part by certain conversations between the organisers and participants of past running events on the meaning of “mass participation”.’
