Marco Werman: Tell us about artist Han Qian, who joined you on your walk. She’s a visual artist and writer. What was the outcome of that collaboration?

Paul Salopek: Well, she was doing a kind of introspective work into migration within her own family. She was investigating these kinds of personal issues and then asking bigger questions about the economy, about society, about what happens when you leave home. Can you ever find home again?

What did she learn about her family’s history through this project and walking with you? What can you share?

She basically looked back at her family. They, themselves, came from northeastern China, migrated to a big industrial city in central China and, in the process, kind of had to leave part of their identities behind. So, she was kind of grappling with issues of her family’s identity. Are they from what is currently called Manchuria, or are they from central China? It’s a very artistic question: “Who are we?”

Before we get back to the artists and walking with artists, I was struck by how Han Qian joined you for a walk after she understood your intent behind the Out of Eden Walk. Have you found, along the route you’re creating, that you’re generating interest and excitement around the idea of long, slow walking, with others really dialing in for the first time to what it can impart?

I think this project is kind of a magnet for people who are somewhat uncomfortable with the status quo, whatever that may be. It might be culturally, ideologically, society-wise. And so, artists are a natural segment of people. You know, artists generally tend to kind of be a bit uncomfortable with life, otherwise they wouldn’t ask probing questions like where to locate their life within the cosmos. So, it’s been a fantastic privilege to be able to tap into that energy, Marco, and walk with people like poets, with people who paint in India, with amazing landscape photographers in Turkey, with cinematography artists, video artists in South Korea. This is part of the thrill of the walk.

Yeah, I mean, you started to tell us a moment ago about how the Out of Eden Walk has hosted art exhibitions in recent years, two of them, one in Shanghai and one in Seoul. What was the goal of these exhibitions? What was the theme?

Going back to my background as a foreign correspondent, when I walk into a new country or a new place, I do the usual homework. I talk to experts. I interview people on the phone. I read books, articles. But I guess as a factor of getting older, Marco, and maybe just slowing down through my project through the years, I think that journalism is limited in some ways. And so, I think I’m migrating more towards art myself. I kind of read the poetry of a country. I look at the country’s visual arts produced in the past and in the present. And this kind of unlocks whole kinds of vistas of investigation that might escape me if I were just focused on current events.

Now, the exhibition in South Korea that was tied to the Out of Eden Walk actually coincided with a story we paid close attention to here on the show: the declaration of martial law by former President Yoon Suk-yeol, which was ultimately short-lived and resulted in his removal from office. How did that moment reframe what you were doing with this art show in Seoul?

That was pretty wild, the timing of that. So, these exhibitions take, as you might imagine, a bit of time to set up — months, right? And so, we have to find a local gallery, a local partner who might be a curator to help us sift through artists who might come walk with me. That’s part of the deal. And that was all done, and then literally the day before the opening of our exhibition was this attempted coup by the president, and the streets started to fill with hundreds of thousands of protesters. And so, I had an emergency phone call. I was kind of rushing back to Seoul to attend to this, and I called Sooyoung Leam, the curator, and said, “Are we going to go ahead with this?” And she said, “Absolutely. It’s even more important now than ever in terms of art supporting democracy.” So, it was a really amazing, amazing time to be showing young Korean artists, at the same time that there were protests just outside on the streets.

What about more exhibitions in the future? Are there plans?

There are. I mean, they take a lot of work, I have got to be honest. I was thinking of having them in every country and getting artists from each country to walk with me for a little while, then do an exhibition before I walk out of the next country. I’m not sure I’ve got the kind of bandwidth for that, so we’ll be picking and choosing on our walk through North America, down into South America and to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Looking forward to that.

Yeah, it’s a great goal. When you think about human migration and art making, Paul, how do you make sense of it? Like, what is the connection? What’s the point?

Yeah, think about this, Marco. I think, you know, art, the impulse to be creative, is one of the fundamental attributes of being human. It’s as old as movement, right? We’re a walking species. We’re restless. We move around. We vote with our feet, usually to fill our bellies, right? Something very pragmatic. But we also ask ourselves, as a species, where we are and why we are here. These big, deep questions. So, art has paired with walking, going way back. There were the griots of Western Africa, the traveling storytellers who would pluck a thumb harp, walking between villages. There are ancient Greek poets, Chinese poets. Movement, travel was part of their methodology. So, I think I’m kind of not inventing anything new by including artists in this global walk. I think I’m actually harkening back to the original bedrock of what it means to be human.