Why ambient walking art videos might be what you need right now

As the world takes measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the work of artist Heman Chong offers an oddly calming respite

“Walking is possibly the most important activity in my life,” says Heman Chong, the artist behind Ambient Walking. Nguan 

“Walking is possibly the most important activity in my life,” Heman Chong says.

The statement is far from an exaggeration.

The Singaporean artist has uploaded more than 200 recorded walks on his YouTube page Ambient Walks, which he began in December 2018. He’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Armed with an Osmo Pocket camera, Chong documents his journeys around parks, shopping malls and airports all over the world, from Munich to London to Dubai.

The crisp footage slightly bops with his steps as he strolls along the cobbled paths of the National Orchid Garden in Singapore, where he stops to admire the hibiscus and ixora plants in full bloom, or as he walks between the shimmering columns of Dubai Airport’s Terminal Three.

Some of the walks are twenty minutes long, most stretch for more than an hour. The 4K resolution is so vivid and detailed that it doesn’t take much to imagine yourself accompanying Chong on his walks. There is no music. No dialogue. Just the gentle crunch or tap of Chong’s steps and the occasional breeze.

It is easy to lose yourself to the vicarious peace that comes from watching the footage.

Chong’s walks have been getting more attention lately. His Ambient Walking page has a few thousand subscribers, but that number is steadily growing. It doesn’t take much to figure out why.

As most of the world takes measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, this level of mobility seems like a fantasy.

I recently watched one of his latest uploads – walk no. 203 – which documents his visit to the Louvre Abu Dhabi earlier this year. The video follows Chong’s perspective as he surveys the ceiling’s interlaced geometric design and walks between exhibition spaces. There’s something poignant about watching Chong casually stroll from painting to painting, especially as we don't know exactly when the museum will be open to visitors again.

"Views of my walks have been spiking to about 2,000 views a day," Chong – who is also one of the artists behind the Library of Unread Books that appeared at the Jameel Arts Centre last year – tells The National.

“I can only speculate that it's because people are absolutely claustrophobic being trapped at home and have been using my video walks as a way of escaping into the outside.”

The prolific walker may be right. Our circles of movement have contracted to the few square metres of our homes. Self-isolation and social distancing are a necessity right now and the right thing to do, but that doesn't change the fact that staying at home can be challenging, making some of us feel restless. Chong’s walks somehow offer respite in this enclosed present.

“I am happy that I finally made something that has a tangible benefit to someone,” the prolific walker says.

The Ambient Walking collection isn't the only one of Chong's works to be created on foot. In January, he released his Writing While Walking and Other Stories for the Singapore Art Museum. The project comprised of 2,500 words that he wrote on his iPhone during an eight-hour meander around Singapore.

“I had no predefined route, time limit or destination in mind; I simply left my home and walked until I was completely exhausted, before taking a taxi home,” Chong says.

The project was an exploration of a new method of artistic production that compresses walking and writing into one process. Similar to his meandering, the text Chong wrote has no structure, plot, context or word limit.

He wrote until he “entered a state of wordlessness,” much like walking to the point of exhaustion.

“The absence of punctuation or capitalisation is deliberate,” Chong says of the text, which he distributes for free as a PDF for people to read or to use as a poster. “It creates a sense of breathlessness as someone attempts to read it, recalling the physical exertion of walking in Singapore’s tropical and humid climate.”

Taking photos of the nondescript back doors of embassies

Last year, Chong began his Foreign Affairs project, which saw him going to embassies around the world and taking photographs of their nondescript back doors.

“I have chosen to present these back entrances without any identifying markers, thereby retaining the mystique of the veiled and the inaccessible that is often associated with embassies,” Chong says, adding that he will never reveal the embassy behind each photograph.

“This work demonstrates my interest in surveillance. This barrage of back doors invites a critical examination of both systemic infrastructures and the practical complications involved. While these back doors have been designed as emergency escape routes, they also belie global fears of spying and political subterfuge.”

The political bend to Chong's work is especially apparent with Foreign Affairs, but the artist believes that his walks are his most political act.

“Through the act of walking I can finally become, in a small way, a part of the solution behind climate change. Walking takes me away from looking at the world via screen to look at the real world, thus eliminating any usage of electricity,” Chong says.

Instead of relying on motorised means of transport, the Singaporean artist prefers getting to wherever he’s going to by foot. Regardless of how much distance he needs to traverse.

“My friends are often shocked when I turn up for dinner in a restaurant and I tell them that I had walked two hours to get there, and that I’m walking home after dinner.”

For Chong, walking is not merely a way of staying fit, or saving up on a gym membership.

“It’s not much, but I don’t know any other way to be politically active in a very real way,” Chong says. “Making art is hardly real politics.”