Prespes
Highlights
7 + 7 PLACES #3 (towards WAC 27)
The Third Online Meeting for the 7 + 7 Places project will take place on Wednesday, February 11th2026, 20:00 EET (19:00 CET). During the two previous meetings we touched upon various approaches to the Place of Prespes and discussed six different walkshops that unfolded in Prespes as part of the International Encounters 2025 (WAC). In
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Wandering as a way of attaining knowledge beyond the material world
That maybe a Sufi quote about dervishes, the whirling kind, of which I read about in To the Lake by Kapka Kassabova: “A precept of dervishism is renouncing possessions, surrendering to the Road.” The subtitle of her book is “A Journey of War and Peace” and, as she writes of her travels along the shores
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Walking with Children
A program within WALC25, curated by Clare Qualmann, Clementine Butler-Gallie & Athanasia Tziona. It created playful, intergenerational encounters with children, connecting local communities and affirming children as equal participants in walking art.
A Metre of Blue: Mnemosyne and the Art of Distilling a Walk
It was around five in the morning on the shores of Lake Prespa in Northern Greece when I first encountered Ridha Dhib: a figure moving slowly along the water’s edge, a walking stick in hand, conversing with a strange, synthetic voice coming from a small red speaker clipped to his hip. The lake was still,
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Between Clay, Farmland and History
During the first two editions of Made Of Walking by The Milena principle (2015 and 2016, Delphi, Greece), we had the opportunity to meet two remarkable walking artists: the Dutch artist Ienke Kastelein and the Greek artist Katerina Drakopoulou. Through numerous international projects, their artistic practices have become widely recognized within the field of walking
Walking pieces
Sentinel Species
People have long observed animals for signs of threatening hazards or evidence of impending environmental threats. These species, called sentinel species, are of great importance not only in “perceiving and bringing” the first signs and symptoms of the “climate crisis”, but also in “anticipating” it as sentinels. Sentinel Species Walking Encounter reverses the sentinel roles of humans and birds. Humans will enact the role of sentinels for the endangered bird species living in the area. Choosing Prespa as a location for the proposed Performance/Installation is no coincidence as Prespa is an environmentally protected area.
Telegraph (Prespa)
Telegraph (Prespa) is a video artwork created through a global participatory project during the International Walking Arts Encounters 2021, led by artists Christopher Kaczmarek and Deirdre Macleod. The project involved participants from Prespa, Greece, and worldwide exchanging walks and gestures via video and written prompts, resulting in a collective composition that connects local and remote spaces through shared walking experiences.
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Prespa-Ohrid 1848: A drifting walk of Edward Lear
This post examines Edward Lear's 1848 journey through the Prespa basin during Ottoman rule, highlighting his use of walking exploration to document landscapes and urban environments through paintings and sketches. It situates Lear's work within 19th-century Romanticism and presents his travelogue as an early form of walking art that contributes to aesthetic and historical understanding of the region.
Shadow-walks
This audio paper presents the Shadow-walks project, where the author collaborates with local inhabitants worldwide to document meaningful, repeated walks through recorded conversations and improvised vocalizations. The project explores how repeated walking imprints traces on places, making personal narratives and communal memories audible, with adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic including remote interpretations of these walks.
• Articles on WLC
Walking images into place: WAC encounters and the anima of Prespa
In summer 2025, for one entire week, walking became the defining activity in Prespa, a mountainous transboundary landscape where two ancient freshwater lakes traverse Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia. Through acts of healing, experiencing, resisting and becoming, WAC 25 explored walking as a multifaceted practice as part of the wider, four-year Creative Europe project “Walking
Prespa as a community-based walking art project
The Prespa International Walking Arts Encounters 2025 Walking Home - Walking in Transition is this year’s culmination of a process that started in 2007. In that year several artists, scholars, and academics walked from Florina to Prespa in a walking process named Visual March to Prespes of 50 km that aimed to initiation of a process of discovery of the place, the community, and of ourselves
Articles elsewhere
Walking Home
‘Homewards’ is a Walking Home / Walking in Transition walkshop proposal for the International Walking Arts Encounters in Psarades, Prespa, Greece in July 2025 This walkshop asks where and what is home. It acknowledges that we may have to walk a long way before we find somewhere to settle, and that although the building may … Continue reading Walking Home
• Interview with Geert Vermeire
As part of the release of the hardcover/e-book release of my book, Walking as Artistic Practice (softcover comes out in April!), I’m going to be publishing some brief interviews with the various artists, authors, researchers, creatives, collectives, and platforms whose art practice, written material, or other works I cite and mention. My 19th interview in […]
Walking Contencion Island at “Walking as a Question” (Prespa, 4-11 July 2021)
I’m presenting an audio paper at this conference – a remote activity, so sadly I will not be travelling to northern Greece. The conference paper is available here https://walklistencreate.org/walkingpiece/walking-contencion-island/ What is an audio paper? – good question, and this is … Continue reading →
Events
WALC Confluence 11 – Inspiring the next generation of walking artists
Fred Adam and Geert Vermeire host this special Confluence to announce the launch of an online course on walking art and an interactive map to strengthen engagement with walking artists and collectives across the WALC ecosystem. There follows a presentation at 20h CET by Yannis Ziogas regarding the Encounter to take place in Prespa in
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+7 Walking towards a home in Greece
When author Julian Hoffman first arrived in Greece’s remote Prespa region, his Greek was “almost non-existent.” Walking became a form of literacy for him—a way to learn the language of the land by tracing the steps of others, reading stone walls, abandoned houses, plant communities, and animal tracks. “Walking was a way in,” he says,
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WALC Confluence 9 – Prespa Reflections – walking home, walking in transition and beyond
We are keen to hear from attendees and participants of this year’s Prespa Encounter – were you there? What were your highlights and how would you like the Encounter to evolve? If you have been to a previous Encounter in Prespa, but were unlucky enough not to be there earlier this month, we would still like to hear about the highlights and memories you have too.
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