Patrick Düblin

2025 could well be the year of urban walking. We have been celebrating the fictitious 100th birthday of the strollologist Lucius Burckhardt and the 30th anniversary of Stalker’s attraversamenti (border crossings). After being confined to our homes by lockdowns exactly five years ago, we can now appreciate the right to roam once again.

In light of these celebrations, I have been involved in the following:

• In January, Swiss Radio (SRF2 Kultur) invited me to discuss the relevance of the work of Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt. Listen to the interview (in German) here.
  
• In February, I gave a lecture on the recurring desire to experience Rome off the beaten track in an anti-touristy way.
  
• In May, as the inaugural event of the Office for Peripatetic Design, I organised ‘Grenzgänge/Border Walks: Tour de Bâle‘, which invited people to experience the city’s border collectively by walking along it.
  
• On 17 June, I will be giving a talk entitled ‘Peripatetic Lessons: Walking as a Critical Urban Practice‘ at Büro Spatzig, as part of the AA Visiting School Basel.
  
• On 28 June, I will be in conversation with Francesco Careri about his popular book Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice at the Lucius Burckhardt Convention in Kassel.

Also this summer, my paper ‘Climbing Over, Stepping Across: Transgression as Lived Alternative in the Practice of Stalker’ is due to be published in Carmen Popescu’s book Transgression in the Architectures of After-Modernity. In the paper, I analyse educational, social and physical transgressions in Stalker’s practice, focussing on walking and climbing as manifestations of the latter.