What caught my attention of Amelie Daems’s Feet was the journey to rediscover past journeys and footprints of past travelers. The attempt to rekindle the history of the land from the broken bark of a tree to the fallen autumn leaves. The feet were the artwork as it showed the lining of these travels, ‘tracks to catch up on the journey just made’ (Walking Artists Network, 2012). It stated that the foot creates ‘temporary fossils pressed into sole-flesh’ (Walking Artists Network, 2012) thereby ‘the land-printed and printing foot: printed on land in the form of the path and by it, in blademarks’ (Walking Artists Network, 2012).
This reminded me of Rosamond Acworth’s journeys from walking around school, to travelling to church or the Drill Hall to attend outside school activities. I want to explore what routes she would have taken, especially on the last days of her life. A school teacher of hers stated when she died, that she ‘just ended her life in the full swing of her interests and enjoyment in the straightforward day’s work’ (Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School, 2011). Rosamond depended on structure and plan; therefore she must have had a resolved route which she took to arrive at these places.
Through some form of documenting, whether through picture, filming or drawing, I want to explore Amelie Daems’s Feet’s performance, but not investigating a large scale, like the woods, but singling down the research to one journey and person, Rosamond Acworth. I believe the best way to understand her is to go to the heart of her home at Lincoln, which was her boarding school and try to repeat the footsteps that she once took so that I too will have ‘tracks to catch up on the journey just made’.
Walking Artists Network (2012) Amelie Daems’s feet, Conan Lawrence. [Online] York: Available from https://walkietalkietoo.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/bare-feet-conan-lawrence/ [Accessed 1 March 2015]
Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School (2011) Occasional Paper No 1: A Memorial to Rosamond Acworth. [Online] Lincoln: Available from http://www.christs-hospital.lincs.sch.uk/joomla15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=732:a-memorial-to-rosamond-acworth&catid=55:lchs-archive&Itemid=250 [Accessed 24 February 2015]