Walking-sensing as a decolonial art and pedagogical practice

Abstract

How can walking, as a sensate experience and a recollective engagement with our memories, lead us to imagine new ways of knowing, being and sensing otherwise? This article conceptualizes walking-sensing as a decolonial art and pedagogical practice, which offers anti-colonial critiques and activates decolonial imaginations. By combining walking and sensing together, I first highlight how our experience of walking is intrinsically intertwined with our act of sensing that is already oriented and attuned in the contextual relation to things in the world. The notion of walking-sensing is used to describe not only our physical movement and the sensibilities of our bodies, but also as recollective and communal engagements, such as connecting memories with others, (re)collecting personal and local stories, and imagining the ways of living and being otherwise. I further elucidate how walking-sensing can be a form of anti-colonial critiques and decolonial imaginations that valorize multiple knowledges and sensibilities as well as to pave a path towards a new liberatory way of being in solidarity. With pedagogical scenarios, I demonstrate in what ways walking-sensing can be utilized as a critical intervention towards decoloniality. Lastly, introduce two artists’ art-making practice and how they are linked to the concept of walking-sensing. In this way, I elucidate the inextricable relationship between art and pedagogical practice and how walking-sensing can lead to decolonial resistance.