Walking With: Spaces of Intimacy and the Walking Encounter

The chapter examines the creative potential of the caring encounter as an embodied and experienced practice performed in walking explorations, which are structured through the author’s developing practice of ‘walking with’. ‘Walking with’ is explored as a site of intimacy, a practice that aims to build relations rather than escape them, to understand space through experiences and also challenge disciplinary boundaries. Informed by the work of women walking artists and feminist researchers, the author explores ‘with’ in walking spatial practices as a mode rather than a fixed condition: a practice that involves openness that aims to tease out forms of interaction with the other, our inner and outer world, as well as with the environments we inhabit.