Desired Paths, Required Movement: A Guide to Traveling With Chronic Illness in This Place

Anne E. Stoner

doi:10.33303/gpsv7n2a128

Keywords:

Urban Planning, Disability Studies, Disability, Chronic Illness, Flaneur, Situationist, Walking, Site Specific, Soundwalk, Audio Walk, Walking Research, Desire Path, Urban Architecture

Abstract

This work calls into question the ableist underpinnings behind the history of walking research and Western beliefs surrounding wandering. Consisting of an audio walk and corresponding interpretive maps, Stoner creates a guide to walking and moving through urban areas from the chronically ill perspective. The work asks, “who is able to wander?” by placing the listener into her thought processes as a chronically ill individual. Stoner explores and criticizes the Western history of walking and wandering research, beginning with Thoreau and discussing the Situationists, the flâneur, environmentalism, and finally 21st century ideals surrounding walking. This work is made available to the public through QR codes engraved on maps placed in a guerrilla manner into the micro areas which they depict.

Author Biography

Anne E. Stoner

Anne E. Stoner is a sound artist and collaborative ethnographer whose work, informed by disability studies and queer archival practices, focuses on the intersections of identity and geography in both sonic and physical space. Her work brings about and coalesces studies in bodily complexities, human geography, psychogeographies, and contemporary methodologies in ethnographic archiving and queer anthropology, to create a practice with an empathetic methodology that challenges visual standards within 21st century artmaking and scholarship. Anne holds an undergraduate MA(h) from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art and an MA from Northwestern University. In 2023 she began working toward an MFA in 4D Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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