Times are Changing

10 Seasons of Sunrise Walks in an Increasingly Uncertain World

Blake Morris

‘It’s like British Summer Time has become a season of its own, marking not only a transition, but representing a constant of it’s own’ - @Thetravelingtype_

Since 2019, I have been inviting people to walk the sunrise with me in response to the time change. An hour forward in the spring, an hour back in the autumn. From fifteen minutes before sunrise until fifteen minutes after, starting wherever they are. A daily action, at different times, under the same sun.

Ten seasons in, it has become a ritual marking of time.

Flyer for British Summer Time Season 1; Flyer for British Summer Time Season 10

The first season of walks was a hybrid experience of transnational sunrises: a few intrepid walkers joined me in person; even more joined me at a distance.

By season two, we had shifted into pandemic lockdown. The only way we could walk together was by walking apart.

@fieldwork.write Instagram post, 2024; @thelrm Twitter post, 2020; @voxamanda Instagram story, 2024

Five years on the project has developed a small but consistent community of participants. Some folks drop in for a sunrise or two. This season or that. Others walk with me almost every day. Or indeed every day. A sunrise ‘challenge’, as Carol puts it. Revelling in the sunrises of others, many of whom have already completed their walks by the time I wake up in the United States, I walk alone, but not alone.

Twice a year we revisit the sunrise together. Season after season. Year after year. A slow accumulation of familiar sites. We share our experiences through a web of platforms and connections across international––though mostly anglophile––boundaries. Dee Heddon points out that ‘nineteenth century walkers’ communicated their ‘experiences in letters or diaries, making connections either to others, or to other selves.’[1] We have updated this ritual, sharing our experiences through e-mail and social media, Instagram stories and Facebook posts.

@clarequalmann, Instagram story, 2024; Kel Portman, Sunrise Walk, November 2021; @voxamanda Instagram story, 

The tenth season of sunrise walks was the longest it had ever been. Three weeks between the USA and the UK’s time changes. It felt like the calendar’s form of a joke. Don’t mind the gap!

Tired and lazy, sometimes I was just going through the motions. Rising every day for three weeks, I found myself sleepwalking through a seemingly perfunctory task. A kind of ritual punishment of beauty and grace. Set for myself, by myself. An auto-masochistic pleasure. The melancholy of tedium. The tedium of melancholy.

Leaving my house a few minutes late, going back inside a few minutes early. The cheating minutes where I bought a cup of coffee. Trying different shops each morning until I settled on the right one (the correct confluence of ease, price and taste).

It felt more difficult than previous seasons (and not only because of the additional days of walking). Characterized by crisis––wars with the express goal of eliminating countries and their citizens from the map; natural disasters exacerbated by climate change; the spiralling cost of living; the slow global march of the extreme right––2024 felt particularly challenging. Confused by the state of the world, and my position and responsibilities within it, the walks were often accompanied by bitter tears.

Sunset Park, Brooklyn, sunrise. Photo: Blake Morris, 2024; Kent, England, sunrise. Photo: Carol Dalton, 2024; Sunset Park, Brooklyn sunrise. Photo: Blake Morris, 2024

I Initially conceived British Summer Time as a way to build a community of walkers in Northampton, where I had recently moved. It also, however, satisfied another imperative: with a full-time job in University administration, my projects had to accommodate my work schedule.[2] Like most people, I spend the majority of my time on maintenance. Surviving capitalism. Even as a single man, without children, this work feels all consuming.[3] Nonetheless, the walks feel necessary for survival. My own artistic survival.

I keep walking the sunrises to hold on to a shred of my practice. A shred of the international walking community. A shred of something not transactional or commodifiable. A shred of opposition to the constant imperative to create and monetise “content”. The feeling of a shred.

Of course, my notion of “survival” is not universal. While we all walk under the same sun, the contexts are wildly different. Around the world people are facing life-threatening challenges. Imperial conquests. Genocidal mania. Hungry grabs for power and territory. From Palestine to Ukraine to Sudan to the DRC, the list, unfortunately, goes on and on. My skies are not conflicted; I walk the sunrise without fear. When the maintenance work is actually a matter of life and death, how does one find time to walk the sunrise as art? My stakes are low, my melancholy contextually frivolous.

Is it worthwhile to pursue these practices when seemingly more pressing matters confront the world? Perhaps, in this moment of extreme conflict and despair, a simple act can be enlivening. The point of these walks isn’t to solve the world’s problems; rather, they can help us understand what we share (and what we don’t).

In some ways, the project has reminded me that we can’t solve anything if we don’t persevere. Even when the world feels overwhelming, we have to continue to walk together, think together, share together. The small things matter. The simple joy of sharing the sunrise can keep us going and help us prepare for the bigger battles ahead. For that reason I’ll keep going and cherish sharing the sun as it rises over a confusing, conflicted, imperfect, terrible, wonderful world. I do hope you will join me.

Notes

1. Heddon, Dee. “Turning 40: 40 Turns: Walking and Friendship.” Performance Research 17, no. 2 (April 2012): 67–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2012.671075.

2. It was not the first time I had created a project in response to the vagaries of work, see Slow Lunch.

3. Ukeles, Mierle Laderman. Manifesto! Maintenance Art - Proposal for an Exhibition - “Care.” 1969. Manifesto. Queens Museum. https://queensmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ukeles-Manifesto-for-Maintenance-Art-1969.pdf.