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iAmbic Pedometer: Ur Manoeuvre – A performance piece developed for the gallery

iAmbic Pedometer: Ur Manoeuvre (January 2013) is a performance piece by Tim Brennan existing as a durational video (iPhone, duration 1:37:52) that records Brennan’s walking through Sunderland, its suburbs and semi-rural surroundings. The work revolves around Wordsworth’s reputed mode of composition in which he would walk and utter aloud for hours on end. Moving through inner city, suburban and open spaces, Brennan’s mumblings emerge from the sound of the traffic, shifting between the mode of semi-cogent announcement to concrete poem. The work also refers to the notion of the ‘ur’ as a source of origin; a genealogy which goes back to Kurt Schwitters. It is Brennan’s attempt to complete the 25 years of methodological innovation into the guided walk form as art (what he terms as ‘the manoeuvre’) by uncovering fundamental sonic ingredients of language and tying them to the meter of walking, and poetry whilst framing them within a technological context.

The work was exhibited at the Wordsworth Trust, as part of the group exhibition Their Colours and Their Forms (Dove Cottage, 2 February – 10 March 2013) and published in the book of the same name (ISBN: 978-1-906832—06-3).

It was also exhibited with another work in the group exhibition Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff, 40 Years of Art Walking exhibited at PM Gallery and House, London (26 March – 5 May 2013); Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (1 June – 31 August 2013) and touring in 2014 to: MAC Birmingham; The Atkinson, Southport; and Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.

Funders included Wordsworth Trust, Bath Spa University, University of Sunderland, Northumbria University.