Curated by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey Nunez

There’s a storytelling technique, originated in procedural TV and later adopted by narrative films and videogames, in which two or more characters have an important conversation while walking between places. The technique is generally used as a way of conveying large volumes of information in a dynamic way, while introducing the audience to the relative placement of various locations and communicating a sense of urgency. As a narrative device, it effectively functions as a way of combining two distinct vectors of a narrative (the visual and the aural) into a more compact and efficient whole. 

This technique is referred to as Walk-and-Talk. 

While there isn’t anything analogous in the realm of performance art, walking (to and from the site of a performance; as a component of the performance itself; as a stage of the creative process) and talking (as part of the performance or around it, like in the “artist talk”) are, for artists and audiences alike, such commonplace components of the experience of making and watching performances, that they tend to be taken for granted and disappear from view.

In this new, ongoing series, FADO highlights and investigates these foundational gestures of the performance art vocabulary—walking, talking—through performances and discursive interventions that explore their intrinsic mutual imbrication. After all, isn’t the stroll of the flâneur always also the articulation of an argument? Aren’t the verbal excesses of every character in a classic novel who pines for an unattainable elsewhere just another way of getting there?

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Walk-and-Talk Programming for Autumn 2024

September 21 & 22: The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus by Cason Sharpe

November: part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So (Instagram)

December 7: part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So (in-person performance)