The Silent Walks
The Silent Walks create an unfiltered experience of landscape as art. Rather than seeing representations of landscape in a room or on a screen, far from the actual land depicted, viewers physically moved themselves through what they are observing. Contextualizing the Silent Walks as an artistic experience allowed participants to “turn on their art light.” They consider their sensory experience in a consciously aesthetic way. That is also the reason to walk in silence.
The Silent Walks consist of two main projects (so far): the year-long Silent Walks on the Half Moon at Storm King Mountain and, starting in 2021 and ongoing, Silent Walks at Black Rock Forest. In December 2022 and May 2023, The Silent Walks traveled to the River the Ridge Trail in New Paltz, NY. See photographs, videos and participant's comments through the links below, but remember, nothing compares to the actual experience.
The walk is the art.
The Silent Walks at Black Rock started during the spring of 2021 as part of an artist's residency. During the full moon evenings of March, April, May and June, participants gathered to walk in silence for about an hour through the woods, pausing at two bodies of water to bear witness to the landscape. The Walks were so popular that BRF and Skrzynski agreed to continue them as special seasonal events. Please visit the link above for full details.
The link goes to the December Walk. Use the dates in the blog archive to find the May 2023 entry.
Open to the public, participants met once a month from June 2009-May 2010 at the trail head of Storm King Mountain at 6pm on the waxing half-moon. After the walk, which generally lasted about 30 minutes, participants shared some refreshment and wrote their impressions on index cards. Photographs from each walk and those notes comprise the blog, linked here.
Note the blog starts with the final walk first. Scroll or link to June 2009 in order to start at the beginning.