Walk in Time

In a world that lives from constant growth, competition, movement and speed, the German artist Daniel Beerstecher walks the first slow-walk marathon of art. At a distance of 42.195 km, he moves forward so slowly that he covers just 120 meters per hour. A total of 6 hours per day, presumably for about 60 days, in meditative walking. The performance begins at the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen and leads along the Danube to Tuttlingen to the finish on the runway of the ariport Neuhausen ob Eck. In the flow of time, near standstill, slowness becomes tangible and tangible through digital instruments.

Data are the drops that turn into a torrential river. Progress is growth. In a live stream, a body cam transmits the artist's perspective as he walks and a tracker for extreme athletes* the exact location and course of the Slow-Walk Marathon. These can be seen via this website and on monitors in the Kunsthalle Göppingen, the Museum Art.Plus in Donaueschingen as well as in the municipal gallery Tuttlingen. The contrast between the technical supervision to optimise the performer and its extreme deceleration through meditative walking can be experienced in virtual space and on site.

Further data such as heart rate, skin resistance, temperature, number of steps and walking speed are continuously collected and, after evaluation, result in a digital image of the performance. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the "Institut Entwerfen von Stadt und Landschaft" provide the artist Daniel Beerstecher with state-of-the-art sensor technology. This enables the artist to evaluate a limited series of videos and images, the number of which depends on the walking days of the performance. These can be purchased.

The artist Daniel Beerstecher, who has already become known for similar art projects in public space, invites us to follow him online, as well as to become a testifying person on site and to attend the physical part of the performance or even to join it ourselves.

The performance "Walk in Time" plays with the fields of tension between acceleration and deceleration, self-optimization through technology and meditation, and the relationship between reality and digital space. Despite the almost meditative and slow locomotion, in which hardly anything happens, data is continuously produced. Data that are used today to optimize themselves with the help of technology. "The greater I: less sleeping, more productive working, better living", was the title of a ZEIT's article. Daniel Beerstecher slows down his "great self", his time, and at the same time lets the digital audience participate in the 10 week performance.