About Phil Smith (CrabMan)

AUTHORS: Phil Smith (sometimes also Crab, Crab Man and Cecile Oak)

Dr. Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies, web-walking, somatics and counter-tourism. With artist Helen Billinghurst, he is one half of Crab & Bee, who have recently completed an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth (funded by Arts Council England), a short walking project in the Isles of Scilly and a residency at Teats Hill slipway. They recently published their book, The Pattern (2020).

With Tony Whitehead and photographer John Schott, Phil recently published Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage. He has also developed a ‘subjectivity-protective movement practice’ with Canada-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel, published in January 2021 as COVERT: A Handbook. With Claire Hind and Helen Billinghurst, he co-organised the 2019 ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at the University of Plymouth - on which Walking Bodies is based. As company dramaturg and co-writer for TNT Theatre (Munich), he most recently premiered ‘Free Mandela’, co-authored with TNT’s artistic director Paul Stebbings, about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Paul and Phil have recently written a book about TNT Theatre’s transformation from tiny experimental theatre company to global touring organisation.

Phil is a member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, who published The Architect-Walker in 2018. As well as Walking Stumbling Limping Falling (2017) with poet Alyson Hallett, Phil’s publications include Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance (Red Globe/Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Rethinking Mythogeography (2018) (with US photographer John Schott), Anywhere (2017), A Footbook of Zombie Walking and Walking’s New Movement (2015), On Walking and Enchanted Things (2014), Counter-Tourism: The Handbook (2012) and Mythogeography (2010). He is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the University of Plymouth.

You'd think he wouldn't have much spare time.

"The undisputed king of Mythogeography is Phil Smith" - Jane Samuels

Review his book and film reviews.
Read his Mythoughts
Go to the Counter-Tourism website
Go to the Mythogeography website

5 Ways to Use a Map ~ The full video collection of Tactics for Counter-Tourism ~ Psychogeography Today

Below, Phil's 'The Rough Arts of Contemporary Walking' - an excellent introduction to the man and his habit:

“Walking with Phil is like having my very own Doctor Who” - Siobhan Mckeown, film maker and dj Shibby Shitegeist

Click the image to see details of the book

Phil on 'The Full Totnes Breakfast' discussing theatre, mythogeography (starts at around 14:20)

Click the image to see details of the book

A Misguided Tour with Phil Smith - click the image to download the pdf

Psychogeography Today - a Talk by Phil Smith at Edge Hill University. Click the image to download the talk as a pdf.

Psychogeographical Pilgrim is the illustrated text of a talk given in September 2017 by Phil Smith at The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography, Huddersfield.