You might be aware that WLC is part of WALC, a collaborative 4-year project, partially funded by the EU, which aims to establish an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts. One of our partners is Nau Coclea, headed by Clara Gari.
With this week’s mailing, we’re expanding the scope of our weekly newsletter, with Clara sharing her thoughts with us. If you want to learn more, you can meet up with Clara at our online event on May 29, where she will talk about The Grand Tour, a 250km walk in Catalonia.

Meanwhile, take note that next month is National Walking Month in the UK, and we are delighted that Jack Cornish, Head of Paths at the Ramblers, the U.K.’s largest walking charity, will be our guest at a Walking Writers’ Salon on Tuesday 7 May. He will be  talking about the history of rights of way in England. We do hope you’ll be able to join us.

Some of you will know me well, like you do Geert, Andrew and Babak of WLC. I’m grateful to them for expanding our collaboration, and to give me a voice here, through the platform shared by so many of you, walking artists, soundscape creators, explorers and travelers.
Working in my project, the Nau Côclea Contemporary Art Centre in Catalonia, I experiment with a model which completely merges life and professional activity, not in a conciliatory manner,  as seems to now be the trend, but by merging time, completely, in a kind of "dance mode", through a scenario in which creation and personal time move their feet together, as if in a Perpetuum mobile.

This is how, together with Geert Vermeire, I’ve taken up the challenge to organize, for the second time, the Walking Art and Relational Geographies Conference in Girona and Banyoles, from the first to the sixth of July, 2024. This, after the good times we had together in 2022 with a community of over 100 people who came to Catalonia from all over the world. 

As part of the conference, in step with contemporary thinkers and artists, we have become interested in movement, not only of people but also of animals, plants and all the beings that live with us. This transcending of the human has led us to reflect on transhumanities and on human and non-human migrations. And this is the theme of our 2024 meeting.

Our meeting brings together academics and artists in a hybrid programme in which experience and academic knowledge are of equal importance. That is why, along with first-rate academic contributions such as that of professor Radhika Subramaniam, we have also programmed film screenings, meetings in the city, processions, walkshops, and more, including a long-distance walk between Girona and Banyoles in which some of the most interesting events of our meeting will take place.

I would like to invite you to this conference, which will also be a discovery of my homeland, Catalonia, and of the magnificent city of Girona, which some of you already know from previous visits, and also of the mysterious and enchanting karst lake of Banyoles, a biological jewel with fauna and flora rooted in a remote past.

You can come and exchange your experiences, to explain your projects, or simply to meet informally around a table, with a few beers, to exchange visions, projects and emotions with people from all over the world. 

Consider, your holidays do not have to be “escapades”, or “detours”, as, instead, you can incorporate them into your significant projects, and combine them with your personal research, to fuse them with the spirit that animates you, striving to fulfil that for which each and every one of you has come onto this world.

I invite you to take this journey with us, as I know what this adventure is going to mean for you.

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