GALLERY: These are extracts from page proofs of ‘Run Riot’ (2019) in Handbook on Methods and Applications for Mobilities Research, edited by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Monika Büscher, and Sven Kesselring. Edward Elgar Publishing (2020).

10 RUNS: The structure of the text follows philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s 1778 Reveries of a Solitary Walker, which I encountered in 2011 and referenced in a blog post in my online story-cum-PhD work Kaidie’s 1000-day Trans-Run 12.12.2009-09.09.2012. The chapter was written after I completed my stint as a 2017-2018 CEMORE Fellow and thinking about art and mobilities.  It enabled me to think about my lifelong task of embedding mobilities in my work, although not using the term or referring to the theories until recently.

ABSTRACT/RUN 0: If humanity is heading for collapse, could ‘running artfully’ generate insights to extend thinking and practice around how mobilities research entangles with art and running, and how we write about this? Following in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau 1979) I structure this chapter as ten runs, and lay down initial pathways to spark interest for this inquiry. 

HEADINGS:

  • RUN 0: PREAMBLE 
  • RUN I: UNFINISHED WALKS/THOUGHTS 
  • RUN II: SIDE-STEPPING COLLAPSE 
  • RUN III: RIOTOUS 
  • RUN IV: RESPONSE-ABILITIES 
  • RUN V: FLIGHTS OF THOUGHT 
  • RUN VI: UNFIT CRITICS 
  • RUN VII: REVERIES 
  • RUN VIII: WRITING MOBILITIES 
  • RUN IX: AN ILL-DISCIPLINED MESSENGER RUNNING RIOT 
  • RUN X: TOWARDS DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY 

SERIAL SERIALIST: Structuring texts/images/moving images in movable modules or chunks is nothing new. In 2000, I’d made a film entitled Chlorine Addiction in 10 chapters or what I called ‘laps’ which referred to my then ritual of swimming 10X100m daily. My reference at that time was Krzytof Kieslowski’s astounding Dekalog as well as other serialist and structuralist work that I was enjoying then.

DYSLEXIC WRITING AS AN INTERVENTION: The chapter doesn’t just contemplate running as a methodology, which I have done across various platforms including textual, but works through how writing relates to running and ways to convey that agility and playfulness: Writing about running. Running and disentangling writing while running (I virtually wrote my PhD thesis while running – see Chapter IV). Writing in general. I write as someone who has used/abused/customised text in her visual work all her life, but who has only found out that she/I was dyslexic (with dyspraxia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD) in Autumn 2015, which opens up another prism to understand the relationship/tension between her/my images and text, as well as between her/me and the written (and spoken) word – as this serialism/modular approach could be described as ‘chunking’). Then going back to thinking about running, and understanding it as running dyspraxically and how the runner’s high relate to non-logocentric thinking, which I have explored in my PhD thesis, and which I have described then as an ‘overdrive’, and to my ADHD. .. (that wasn’t a complete sentence…)

Caption: Description of handbook on publisher website.