I'm interested in landscape and experience. In movement and affect, where the senses reach out...
Today I would like to introduce a man walking the pilgrimageroute to Santiago.
But... Sven is blind and deaf.
He is determined to walk the camino to Santiago de Compostela.
He talks with his hands, he feels with his feet.
He grasps the world at arms length.
Showing the world what is possible.
2017
Susanne Bohlmann
(4:04)
"Sven is nearly 50 but he has long dreamed of walking the Camino de Santiago. Sven was born deaf and became completely blind 10 years ago. Despite this and his reliance upon his assistants, Almuth and Sabine, he is driven by his need for independence. From his small, 3rd floor apartment, near the German Black Forrest, he sculpts wooden animals from his memory. He programmes his own website and treks through the nearby mountain wilderness. His hands and feet are now his first line of contact; they experience the textures and map the ground which his assistants carefully describe.
But Sven is not an easy man; his determination is hard to keep up with. Now he wants to challenge himself; trekking 500 miles over mountain, down through the lowlands to the sea. It was an impossible dream until he persuaded Almuth to do it with him. In spring 2017 his wanderlust will reach up through the Pyrenees. Sven and his assistants will walk the entire width of Spain along the Pilgrims Way of St James. Sven will not relent until reaching Cape Finisterre; the cape at the end of the earth. Sven has been straight with us; he won’t wait for us, neither camera nor Assistant will hold him back. It’s a bold statement perhaps as much to himself as to us."
Starting April 19 his Facebook page will publish daily podcasts.
Hannah MacPherson on landscape and blindness..
In Brighton Hannah MacPherson studies (among others) landscape and blindness.
The feeling through the feet can be found in her article
Articulating Blind Touch: Thinking through the Feet, Sense and Society 2009
Walkers with visual-impairments in the British countryside:
Picturesque legacies, collective enjoyments and well-being beneļ¬ts
Journal of Rural Studies, 2016
NON-REPRESENTATIONAL APPROACHES TO BODY-LANDSCAPE RELATIONS
Geography Compass, 2010
