Chip Walks

Art and food have a long history of intersections; from Alison Knowles Make a Salad Fluxus score (1962) to Gordon Matta Clark’s Food (1972), Rikrit Tirivanija’s Pad Thai (1992) to Jorge and Lucy Orta’s Hortirecycling (1997), Ceri Buck’s Invisible Food (2008), to Company Drink’s Going Picking (2014). Food connects people; sharing in its gathering, production and eating enables the building of new knowledge and new understandings of place. These works also have in common the way in which they engage with people - beyond the role of audience - as participants who are central to the creation and realisation of the work; human relations and their social context (Bourriaud, 1998).

In this paper we give some background to the ongoing artwork ‘Chip Walk’ that operates through walking for, and with food. We begin with the history of the work, and chart its development from roots in East London where Clare is based, to a global spread, with a focus on Lesvos, Greece, where Hilary spends time. In each of these locations we consider what the Chip Walk does; how it connects with people, politics and place in a site-specific and political-timing-specific way. We conclude with discussion around the potentials of walking art to connect people, place and politics as artivism.