"WALKING IS SO SIMPLE YET SO DEEPLY COMPLEX": IN CONVERSATION WITH ALISA OLEVA

Walking is one of the most elemental things we do—so ordinary, so entangled with daily life, that we rarely pause to notice its intricacy, let alone its power as a creative, political, or relational act. 

For walking artist Alisa Oleva, walking is not just a way to move through space, but a way of being in it. It is a practice of listening, sensing, marking the world with quiet traces—on the city, on others, on herself. Her work echoes anthropologist Tim Ingold’s idea of wayfaring: moving not with detachment, but with presence; not as a traveller following a map, but as a body unfolding a path through lived experience. Walking becomes a line drawn in time—part choreography, part cartography—shaped by footsteps, attention, and the textures of the everyday. 

In this conversation, we follow these lines, walking with Alisa through cities and thresholds, through silence and noise, through memories and structures. We speak of drifting alone and gathering in temporary communities, of stripping things bare, of returning. At its heart, this is an invitation: to walk differently. Not to arrive, but to notice. To understand space not as something we move through, but something we co-create with each step. 

 WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by BUILDHOLLYWOOD 

Alisa, I want to start with a question about walking as a form of listening. What do you hear when you move through urban space, and how does listening shape your work? 

The connection between walking and listening—particularly the practice of soundwalking—actually came into my work quite late. In the beginning, I was more focused on creating audio walks, which, in a way, is almost the opposite. You're still walking through the city, but instead of tuning into your environment, you're listening to another narrative layered on top of it. 

Even then, I was fascinated by how sound can guide perception. What drew me to audio walks was the invisibility of the participant. They just look like someone walking around in headphones. And there's a freedom in that—you’re not tied to a screen or an object. You're simply walking: eyes open, ears open, in the world. 

What kind of experience were you hoping to create for participants through those early audio walks? 

I was interested in crafting alternative ways of seeing. Leading people through familiar spaces while asking them to listen differently—to a fictional story, or sometimes a recording of the same space they were in, played back as they moved. That act of layering was where my listening practice really began. 

Over time, I started stripping back the immersiveness. My first exposure to art was through volunteering for an immersive theatre production, but my path has gradually peeled away those layers—less spectacle, fewer props, more simplicity. That’s when I connected more deeply with soundwalking. It’s abstract, yes—but also incredibly precise. Because in sound walking, the work isn't handed to you. You, as the participant, do the work. You have to actively tune in and listen. 

Of course, I carefully frame the experience and choreograph the route—because for me, the route is the composition. Walking past a buzzing electricity box, turning into a narrow alley, or stepping into an open square—those choices shape the experience. And actually, soundwalking feels more aligned with how I move through the world. I don’t walk with headphones; I rarely listen to anything when I move. I find it disorienting. So this practice felt much more honest, much more natural to me. 

You mentioned so many threads just now, and I kept returning to one question—not just where your interest in walking comes from, but how your relationship with the city was formed. Do you think that’s shaped by your experience of migration? 

That’s a really good question. I’ve only started to consciously shape that narrative for myself in the last years. It wasn’t something I could’ve identified earlier. But yes, it’s absolutely tied to movement—and to claiming agency over your own story. 

Looking back, my path into walking was practical as much as anything. A lot of my work sits in that tension between the material reality of the city and a more poetic, ephemeral presence. And honestly, I came to art quite late. I didn’t grow up in that world. 

When I moved to London at sixteen, it was a continuation of a migration that began with my parents in the '90s. They came first, mostly doing undocumented work. I stayed with my grandmother in Moscow, then eventually made the choice to come to the UK after school as I could apply for the visa ‘to rejoin mother’. That choice is important—it wasn’t imposed on me, yet I also had that opportunity unlike a lot of my friends. 

When I arrived, I had no resources. I come from a working-class—maybe not even working-class, because my parents worked illegally at first and I grew up with a retired grandmother—background, and that shaped everything. I had to work all the time, doing all kinds of jobs, and I didn’t have stable housing. Somehow, I managed to live rent-free in London for about nine years. Of course, “free” is never really free. There’s always emotional labour, exchange, compromise; so home became a place to sleep and shower—the city became my living room. 

Sounds Like Home, walking and listening performance, Leeds-Kamianske-Santiago, 2024, photo by Lizzie Coombes 

It sounds like your relationship with the city started long before it became part of your artistic practice. Was there a moment when you realised your everyday movements—walking, navigating public space—were something more? 

Even before I was making art, walking shaped how I moved through the world. I was studying art history at the time, but practically speaking, I had no money and lots of time. No Tube card, rarely even a bus pass. So I walked. Or I took long, meandering bus rides. It wasn’t a romantic gesture—it was a necessity. And through that, I started forming a relationship with the city—not through interiors, but through public space. 

I knew where the warm spots were. The cafés that wouldn’t kick you out. The free toilets open late. The all-night McDonald’s. The city became an informal map—an infrastructure of survival. And because I had time, I’d sometimes just pick a direction and walk until I reached the edge of the city. I didn’t know what a “score” was back then, but I was already making them. 

I’m curious—how do you understand the city as both a score and a stage? How do you balance structure and spontaneity in your work? 

I always say—if I wanted full control, I’d make black box theatre. But I work in public space, so I’m never fully in control. No matter how structured a piece is, the city brings unpredictability. That friction is part of why I do it. It mirrors the experience of migration—being in a space where you're not in charge, where you have to adapt. 

Parkour has been a big influence—not in the aesthetic sense, but philosophically. There’s a simple phrase in parkour: “treat obstacles as opportunities.” If you see a wall, it’s not a dead end—it’s something to navigate creatively. That mindset really speaks to me. You can’t change the environment or the situation but you can change how you move in it, physically and emotionally. Just to acknowledge—this won’t change the structural inequalities present in the city but can give one tools to feel a bit more empowered and in control as we walk the streets. 

Things always shift. Maybe you’ve planned a performance, and then there’s a football match or unexpected weather. Suddenly the whole dynamic changes. But I try to stay with those unknowns. Very often they are the work. 

WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by Zack McGuinness 

Do you see walking as a way of resisting the logic of productivity and speed in a city like London? 

Yes and no. Walking can absolutely be about slowing down or connecting, and I’ve facilitated wellbeing walks that focus on that. But for me, the main interest is more practical—how can we shift something in the everyday, even within the busy rhythm of life? If you’re juggling three jobs and kids, maybe your only walk is from A to B. But in that walk, how can you notice something small, shift your attention slightly, like picking up a leaf or taking a photo of the sky? 

That’s what I’m interested in. It's not about forcing slowness—it’s about making small shifts and gaps in the pace we already live in. With my audio walks, I didn’t want people using special gear. I wanted them to use what they already had—familiar tools, like their phone or whatever app they’re used to. That way, the practice becomes part of their daily life, not separate from it. 

You mentioned parkour. How does it inform your work? 

I discovered parkour a bit late, through a job at a gallery working with a collective that collaborated with parkour practitioners, Ser y Durar by Democarcia collective. I was drawn to the idea that parkour doesn’t focus on the value of buildings, but rather the structure, shapes, and how you move through them—whether it’s a cemetery or a palace. That resonated with me, especially the idea of stripping layers and reinterpreting spaces. 

For me, parkour is about being present—no phones, just focused on your body, and the environment around you. It’s also about access; people of all abilities can engage with it. We all follow the same route, but each person experiences it differently, depending on their body and energy that day. It’s about tuning into the now, and that aligns with my performance practice, which focuses on presence. So parkour has influenced my work significantly, especially in how I approach touch and sensory experience. 

The origins of parkour are also key. It was born in the French suburbs of Paris by a group of migrant teenage boys who were trying to escape being chased. This background is deeply tied to the practice. Parkour is about the group; it's not just about individual achievement but how we move together. We often have exercises where everyone has to get over a wall, but some can climb while others can't. It’s not about who can do it but how those who can help support others so we all end up on the other side of the wall. 

You’ve said you don’t often work with history in a traditional sense. Can you say more about that? 

I almost never work with the historical background of places. When people ask about my next “tour,” I find it a bit funny. I'm not really interested in providing historical information or giving a tour in the traditional sense, though I don’t mind. There’s usually very little historical information in my work, except for how the city operates or how people access it. For example, when I worked in Felixstowe, the port town’s history became part of the work, but it wasn’t about specific historical events. It was more about the texture and materials of the city, its geography, its environment and its context. 

Of course, in places like Mariupol [Ukraine], where I worked during the war in 2019, I couldn't ignore the context. But it's not about history in the traditional sense—it's about the history of the people. I often ask people for their favourite routes, locations, or maps. It's like a bottom-up archive, and it ties into my interest in questioning control and power. I come from a time when history was constantly rewritten, and I’m allergic to the idea of a single, chronological narrative. 

Instead, I’m interested in the expertise of the everyday—the knowledge that people who live in a place have about their surroundings. They know their city in a way no one else can. That’s what makes the everyday so fascinating. It’s not about grand historical narratives but the small, often overlooked histories of our daily lives. My work focuses on this connection to places and how we experience them. 

Research residency, commissioned by Izolyatsia and hosted by Platform TU, Mariupol, 2019, photo by Maria Pronina 

I was also thinking about the intimacy of a one-on-one encounter in that context, versus walking as a group. And what you said about parkour—about that sense of community—how does that dynamic compare for you, both personally and for those involved? 

Yeah, that’s actually a really interesting question. When I started, I was focused almost entirely on one-on-one work. For the first three or four years after graduating, my practice was all about individual encounters. Even with my collaborator, Debbie Kent, during the early days of the Demolition Project, our work was centered around one-on-one experiences. I never really questioned why this was my approach; it just felt right. 

It might have come from my initial fascination with the city—particularly the anonymity of urban life. We live in cities where we're physically close to each other, but often, we’re strangers. The tension between intimacy and isolation, proximity and distance, became a big theme and material for me. 

How about walking with groups? 

I’ve learned that especially with larger groups, it can feel invasive in certain areas. For instance, I try to avoid walking through residential estates with big groups because it feels too disruptive. But when I walk solo or with just one other person, that same sense of invasiveness doesn’t occur. It’s really about knowing how to respect the space you’re in. 

That being said, there’s also a group element that plays a huge role in my practice, especially with the networks of walkers I’ve activated around the world. Through simultaneous walks—where people walk together but never actually meet—I’ve created these temporary communities. We’d stay in touch through WhatsApp groups or shared messages, but we never physically meet. 

Despite that, there’s this profound sense of connection, however brief. These encounters may be short, but they can lead to lasting relationships or ripple effects, where people stay in touch and even collaborate. That’s the power of the group for me—not the traditional group performance, but a kind of ephemeral, temporary community that leaves a lasting mark. 

From left to right: The Demolition Project, durational installation, London, 2018, photo by Rocia Chacon  Walking Through, art residency, installation as part of Moving Like a Resident exhibition-sharing, Matsu New Artist Village, Taiwan, 2024

Do you ever walk on your own? 

I’ve never made a performance that was solely my own solitary walk. But I did once do a 24-hour walk on my own, and even then, there was an element of public interaction. I had a phone installed in the gallery space with an open messenger where I was sending notes and photos from the walk, and people in the gallery could send messages back or engage with me through the chat. That’s always been part of my work: the moment of encounter, even in solitude. 

And, importantly, a big part of my work comes from friendships. A lot of my projects started because of friends supporting me—curators, fellow artists, people who shared their networks with me. I don’t work much with large institutions; I prefer smaller, more personal connections. Many of my works come from alternative networks, often initiated by friends. 

In fact, one of the most memorable projects I did was with a close friend who passed away from cancer. We created a game where we each picked a location on the map—one in Moscow, one in London—and we had to travel to each other’s location. It could be anywhere, no matter how inconvenient. She once picked a place so far out of the way I had to take multiple modes of transport. These projects felt just like my art practice, but they were deeply personal, not ever made public. 

It’s like drawing parallel lines across distance—separate but in sync. That makes me think of Tim Ingold—his idea of “lines drawn in movement” feels like it’s running through your work, especially when you speak about walking as both presence and inscription. 

Yes! For me, the materials I work with are like footsteps, traces, and maps. Countermapping is a huge part of my work. I’m really drawn to this idea of “desire lines”—those alternative paths that people create, the routes that aren’t necessarily planned or conventional. It’s my language, in a way. The imprints we leave on the city, how we mark the world and each other, that’s a central theme in my practice. 

So walking is a way of understanding how we leave marks—on spaces and on each other? 

Exactly. The footstep is my primary material. It’s both literal and metaphorical. It’s the sound of footsteps, the way they touch the land, and how we leave an imprint—whether physically or in a more abstract, metaphysical way. Walking is so simple, yet so deeply complex. It’s one of those things we rarely think about, but it’s incredibly profound. Did you know that teaching robots to walk is one of the hardest things? It’s a huge challenge. 

And I love what [artist and musician] Laurie Anderson says about walking: “Walking is falling.” Every step we take is a tiny fall that we recover from, which is why when babies learn to walk, they fall over and over again. It’s this incredibly intricate balance of movement. That’s where it connects to the everyday—walking is such a natural part of life, yet it’s full of deep, often unnoticed complexity. We only think about it when something goes wrong, like if someone has to relearn how to walk again after an injury. 

But there’s so much more to it when you start to break it down. That’s why I say we’re already experts. Walking is a superpower we all have, but we rarely stop to consider its depth. 

Repeat, walking performance, part of Work Hard Play Hard, Minsk, photo by Dzina Zhuk 

Can you expand on the complexities of walking? 

Walking can be incredibly powerful, even transformative—but it can also be harmful or problematic. There’s this idea of who gets to walk where, and how that access isn't equally distributed. I've been on hikes where just one footstep can leave a mark on the landscape for hundreds of years. That really stayed with me—how even something as simple as walking is never neutral. 

Walking carries a kind of political and social weight. It can be gentle and reflective, but it can also be an act of intrusion or dominance, depending on the context. Access to walking—where you can go, who can walk where, how safe you feel doing it—depends on so many factors: gender, geography, age, identity. It reveals a lot about the structures we live within. 

So yeah, walking is beautiful, but it’s never just walking. It’s layered, it’s loaded—it tells you so much. 

Because walking is also so ephemeral—and your practice is too—I wanted to ask how you approach documentation. What do you think about preserving something so transient? 

That’s such a big and beautiful question. I’ve had a complicated relationship with documentation… When I was younger, I was faithful to the performance art’s original denial of any form of documentation, focusing only on the presence and experience. I was more interested in the experience itself, not in making something “presentable” or permanent. I didn’t even want a website—my partner had to gift me one for my birthday just to get me to start. 

But there were also very real, practical reasons. I didn’t have a budget. For the first few years out of university, I was doing unpaid work, juggling other jobs. Documentation didn’t feel possible when I could barely afford the travel to make the work itself. 

Over time, though, my approach changed. I started seeing documentation not as a necessity, but as an extension of the practice—if it could come from the experience, or reflect it in some poetic way. For example, in my blindfold walks, I’d ask participants to draw a map afterward—of how they imagined the route. Some of them shared those, and they became these quiet traces of what had happened. Documentation also became for me a tool to share work with those who could not access it in person. 

That’s an interesting way to think about documentation—as something generative, not just archival. Have there been moments where a form of documentation actually surprised you? 

One of the most exciting shifts came recently, with a bit more funding. I was commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD to run a monthly art walk in East London. For each walk, I invited a friend to be a “creative documenter.” They could respond in any way—film, photography, sound, poetry, illustration, anything that they feel like. There were no expectations. And the results were beautiful. Nothing looked like the walk itself, but everything held something of it. That felt like a breakthrough. 

I also joke that I’m slowly becoming a walking-and-postcard artist, because I’ve been obsessed with using postcards as a form of documentation. They’re light, portable, non-precious—something you send, not something you archive. For me, that feels right. 

These postcards take a lot of care. They include participants' contributions, and it often takes months to assemble them—figuring out credits, permissions, changes. It becomes part of the work itself. 

We've touched on the political and emotional potential of walking, but I wonder—if someone reading this loves to walk, is there one small, digestible practice you’d suggest that could shift how they relate to walking, to themselves, and to the city? 

It’s not about a special kind of walk, but small shifts—something you do within your everyday walking. For me, it’s about repetition. Doing the same thing each time you pass a certain place—touching a tree, taking a photo. Something small, something familiar. I believe in the power of that kind of return. It is also about trying to change an angle a bit, focus on the sense you usually don’t notice much—smell, sounds, touch and textures, looking up, looking down, looking into the far distance, looking very close. 

These little gestures might seem unnoticeable, but I think they can really shift how we relate to ourselves, and to the city. 

WALK, series of monthly urban art walks commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD, London, 2024, photo by Deacon Lui 

Leaving Alisa’s, I consciously paused outside her house before rushing back to the tube. The streets were already quiet, with only a handful of people passing by. I stood there for a moment, counting four, before reaching for my phone to cue up my "groovy funk soul Monday evening" playlist. Yet as my thumb hovered over the screen, I remembered our conversation—about how often we move through the world on autopilot. Not now, I thought. Not yet, Spotify. 

Alisa's work invites us to rethink how we navigate the spaces around us—not just in terms of where we go, but how we move, who can move, and at what cost. Through her walks, we are reminded that the journey itself is as significant as the destination. The traces we leave behind—whether physical or emotional—become part of a much larger, often unseen, story.