Tent/pack/stick: walking with mundane architectures in arid Australia

This paper presents a doing of cultural geography through a walking research-creation project on a remote trail in arid Australia. Critical walking methodologies were engaged in fieldwork that in and through its doing generated a friction in which the awkward, unequal, unstable and creative qualities of interconnection across difference were laid bare. The paper shares glimpses of a ‘fieldwork fail’ through a retrospective assembly of moments that shed light on the practical application of creative walking methodologies – methodologies that changed unexpectedly during the fieldwork. In the beginning I was a researcher setting off on a group hike with a clear programme of fieldwork, and in the end, I was separated from the group and alone in a formidable landscape with an entirely new set of concerns. Four years later, my original expectations of the fieldwork have been thoroughly overwritten by the lived experience of its relational entanglements and ongoing reconfigurations of knowledge. Written with an awareness of being a small part of a larger equation, the paper advances the doing of cultural geography through reflection upon the displacement and lively extension of creative walking methodologies, resulting in the creation of new and surprising artworks.