Gehen, bleiben

"Contemporary art has found many ways to convey the range of emotions experienced between the acts of going and staying, from the beginning to the end of a journey, along the road and at the destination. With an in-depth essay by Volker Adolphs, artist statements, and quotations from philosophy and literature, this publication embraces the fundamental theme of walking, regarding it as a broad and complex metaphor for the transitory and the fleeting, and often as a symbol for the passing of human existence. Going staying comprises around eighty installations, objects, videos, photographs, and drawings by thirty-seven international artists from the sixties to the present, all of whom explore - often using their own bodies - the concepts of movement and of places where movement comes to a halt. They ask why and how people walk - in the studio, city, and landscape - and try out different forms of stying and living in an increasingly accelerating and evasive world. Images of going and staying convey the artists' experience of identity, freedom, and change, as well as isolation, numbness, and violence"--Jacket.