walking as art practice

The recent reaction against the fact that the new French Prime Minister, Nicholas Sarkozy goes jogging is very interesting. It shows how ingrained the idea of walking is as a spatial and social practice in the minds of the French - the tradition of the flaneur and the 'walking rhetorics' described by de Certeau in his book 'the Practice of Everyday Life'.

The comment taken from The Guardian

it is rarely a good sign when a middle-aged man engages in ostentatious running, and to see photographs of President Sarkozy as he thuds back from yet another outing - jowls a-wobble, sweat soaking through his NYPD T-shirt -......
It would only add to the despair of Sarkozy's critics - who already consider his jogging to be deeply un-French, undignified, unintellectual, individualistic, American, rightwing and possibly totalitarian as well......
But even if Sarkozy could be persuaded to adopt a more cerebral sport, there is surely no guarantee that the replacement would show him in a more pleasing light to intellectuals such as Alain Finkielkraut, who told a French television audience, "Western civilisation, in its best sense, was born with the promenade. Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. " ....with jogging there is no meditation, no chance for conversation, no chance for accident, it is a closed experience.

The TV footage of the discussion (in french) with Alain Finkielkraut is at daily motion

I have heard the same said about Nordic walking - that it destroys the meditative art of the wander. No one can just go for a walk anymore, we have to be on the way to somewhere, conspicously busy doing something in the space in-between one place and another.