I’m Mark Wihak, the person behind Project Pedestrian. I’m a filmmaker and educator living on Treaty 4 lands in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Walking has been an important part of my life ever since I meandered down the back alleys to and from elementary school. I’ve walked in England’s Lake District, spent a week walking across Luxembourg, and on a steamy June day my spouse Wanda and I walked the Manhattan length of Broadway from the Harlem River Ship Canal to the harbour at Bowling Green. But I don’t consider myself a “serious walker”*. I’ve not done any of the major pilgrim walks or hiking trails and probably won’t. Most of my walking is in the cities I’ve lived in and visited, and lately often in the company of a lovely long dog named Marlene.

There are many serious walkers out there and some of them are writers and artists who’ve made work that beautifully evokes their experiences and ideas; I’ll be sharing some of my favourites on the Resources and Notes pages of this website.

With Project Pedestrian, I want to try and find my own ways into this vast subject, and to creatively explore how a time-based medium like film can work with a time-based activity like walking.

Walking was our only way of moving through the world for most of the 300,000 years that Homo Sapiens have been around. In the past 200 years the changes wrought by the development of steam and internal combustion engines profoundly changed the ways we travel through our towns, cities, and countryside and alienated our relationship to our environments. Project Pedestrian will explore walking as a way of engaging with the world around us.

We walk for transportation, exercise, and for some, work: letter carriers, dog walkers, back alley gleaners. Walking provides an ideal platform for observation and contemplation and can be done solo or with companions. When I’m new to a place, walking is the best way to begin to understand it. As the filmmaker Werner Herzog has said, “The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot”. I was reminded of the importance of walking during the first full year of the COVID lockdown, when daily walks were an essential component of maintaining my mental and physical health.

Project Pedestrian will combine my subjective experiences of walking with collaborations on walks with other pedestrians, inquiries into the wider conditions of walking, and experiments with different ways of capturing, editing, and exhibiting moving-images and sound. 

On Project Pedestrian I intend to record a number of walks, solo and in collaboration with others. The focus will be on personal experiences of walking in urban and rural environments rather than on any of the famous hiking or pilgrimage routes. The walks will take place over four seasons; some will have planned itineraries while others will be open to improvisation and opportunity.

As a white, middle-class, cisgendered man I’m aware my experience of walking has been privileged. Gender, cultural background, age, mobility, sexual identity, and income level impact the act of being a pedestrian. On Project Pedestrian I plan to collaborate with a number of people on recording walks and learning from their experiences.

2025 is the year for gathering footage; 2026 will be the year for assembling it into something. One of the reasons I’ve titled this a “project” is I don’t think it will be single thing; the exhibition phase of Project Pedestrian will likely take a few forms: a linear essay film intended for festivals and online release, a series of shorts released online and via social media, an archive of walking-related resources and notes on this website, and possibly an expanded cinema installation.

Our ability to walk is provisional. Some of us are never given the ability to walk, others lose it through disease or accident or war. I’m still able to walk comfortably, but having witnessed the physical decline of my parents I’m aware the ease of walking will be impacted as I age. I want to work on this project while I’m still fully able to.

I’m grateful to SK Arts and the Department of Film at the University of Regina for the support provided to Project Pedestrian.

If you’re curious, you can see some of my other film work here.

* in the spirit of transparency, while I love walking I also own and drive a car, own and ride a bike, and use public transportation too.