Mortality Tables – 1st August 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
The latest instalment of the ambitious and wide-ranging Impermanence Project curated by Mortality Tables is a document, as the artist explains, simply and succinctly: ‘This is the sound of my footsteps. I walk through some woods every lunchtime when I’m at work. I try to take a different route every day. The recording starts and ends at the office door. There are two gates which separate a lake – one of several – from the woods.’
This simple premise of recording a walk – a few seconds short of seventeen minutes in duration speaks on a number of levels: the first, in context of the project’s premise, is also the context of the walk itself – the lunch break at work. A brief window in which to seek separation from the work and the workplace. Too few workers really use this time as their own, with many scoffing a sandwich as their desk, or nipping to a canteen or a supermarket for a prepackaged meal deal, instead of something more beneficial to both physical and mental health. I must stress that I’m not judging, and it’s not easy, but as a walker myself, when I was office-based, I would make a point of getting out on a lunch-break, and now home-based, divide my day with a walk. This time out from work is but brief, but affords an opportunity to decompress, to recalibrate.
The fact the artist reports trying to take a different route every day is interesting. Treading new ground, or even walking a known route in the opposite direction, or otherwise questing for variety keeps things fresh, and opens one’s eyes to new sights. These things are often in the detail, but also change with the seasons, noting the changes in the colour of the leaves, a toadstool, hearing birdsong. The world is ever changing, and while work can all too often manifest as a groundhog day of ‘same shit, different day’ which often feels like ‘same shit, same day again – and what day even is it?’ the outdoors paints a different picture. Even when the realisation hits that it only seemed as though Spring was beginning to break mere weeks ago and now summer has past and the air smells of Autumn, and that nagging sense of another year having evaporated and life slipping past settled awkwardly in the gut – a soft but palpable blow which serves as a reminder of how short life is, the outward signs of the passage of time are evidence of being alive.
Listening to 17 Minutes, we get to accompany Xqui on their walk in real-time. They keep a decent pace, too, and as one tunes the attention, changes in echo, background sounds, the metallic scrape of a gate hinges, the different terrains underfoot, all become significant. There is traffic. There are few people, at least speaking along the way. I abhor having to listen to people’s conversations as I walk. And yet I find I’ve been unable to listen to music while walking since lockdown, and simply have to hear everything.
Although documenting a walk through woods, the backdrop to 17 Minutes sounds somewhat urban, or at least overtly inhabited, a setting where human presence dominates nature. A couple of minutes from the end, a gate swings and clangs shut. Although we’re not yet back at the office door, it feels significant. I even feel myself slump a little inside, feeling that passing through this gate – which in the opposite direction represents the opening up of a path to freedom – signifies the end of this escape. And with this, comes the hard appreciation of the fact that nothing last forever, especially not a lunch break.
AA
Aural Aggravation 