WAC – Walking Arts Encounters/Conference Prespa (Greece), 3-10 July 2023
Made of Walking (X) – walk · listen · create – School of Fine Arts / UOWM
Walking Visions/Visions for Walking
In the third walking arts encounter in Prespa we explore the various dimensions of “Walking Visions” with an encounter for sharing of artistic walks and walkshops, along with a conference about the topic.
Prespa is a natural reserve with unique wildlife, woods and mountains, with the Prespa lakes at its center. The big lake is shared with Albania and North-Macedonia. It is a large, and sparsely populated area with small old villages, of which many abandoned, still witnesses of the diaspora of inhabitants after the Greek civil war in the middle of last century, that raged through this area and that left the idyllic landscape with scars and traces up to today.
We invite artists, writers and other creative practitioners, critics and researchers to gather in Prespa this summer and to take up the provocation of the encounters/conference theme.
We are open to paper proposals and artistic or walkshop proposals in many different media and formats. You are also welcome just to take part in the activities and meet up with walking artists and researchers during the week of the event.
The encounters/conference is a community meeting place to share work and ideas as a group, partially made possible by the agency of the walking arts community, and would not be possible if not by the priceless and unremunerated voluntary effort of many people locally and around the world. It is not a festival that commissions art work or is able to provide budgets to artists or contributors. As organizers of a global event and doing great effort for inclusion of the global south, we are aware of the difficult situation affecting many artists around the world and we try to take this into account as much as possible to offer equal chances for everyone to take part.
The many hundreds of walking creatives that have taken part in the previous Prespa encounters or in the related encounters in Portugal, Spain, France or Cyprus, will confirm that one of the encounters greatest strengths is just the walking together of a mainly unknown, sublime and significant landscape and territory, next to becoming part of a growing community. Great care is given to the documentation of the work presented by the contributors, resulting in the biggest depository of video recordings about walking arts in the world, next to a book publication and an awarded documentary.
The encounters/conference is conceptually shaped by Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio, (Barcelona), Fiona Hesse (Basel), Anna Luyten (Ghent/Maastricht), Lydia Matthews (New York), Clare Qualmann (London) and coordinated by Yannis Ziogas (Greece) and Geert Vermeire (Belgium).
WAC is organized by the University of Western Macedonia, co-organized and in partnership with Made of Walking/the Milena principle and walk · listen · create (WLC)
Video!!! Ah, the travesty.