Thierry Davila's 'Marcher, créer' Examines Walking as Artistic Practice

In 'Marcher, créer', Thierry Davila traces the evolution of walking from allegorical representation to a processual and aesthetic experience in modern art. The book identifies two historical shifts: first, the transition from classical depictions of walking to a phenomenological approach enabled by 19th-century chronophotography; second, the emergence of walking as an aesthetic practice, from Romantic promenades to Balzac's 'theory of gait' and Benjamin's flâneur. Davila argues that this shift from kinematics to 'cinéplastics' materialized in 20th-century artistic procedures where walking became a tool for questioning urban space. The book focuses on three case studies: Gabriel Orozco's gaze as an associative logic for spatiotemporal drift; Francis Alÿs's walking as a gesture of fracture that deconstructs the urban fabric; and the collective movement of Stalker as a critique of functionalist cities. Davila identifies gestures and practices that prioritize movement, tension, and energy over signs and iconology, framing these actions as political acts that allow artists to investigate and name the world. Published by Éditions du Regard, the book includes a preface by Christophe Kihm.