Join us for an engaging question-based collective discussion hosted by Action Synergy, where we bring together artists from Europe and the United States at different stages in their careers, each with a unique relationship to walking arts. While coming from diverse backgrounds and starting points, they have all embraced walking as a means of connecting with their communities—however they define them.
In this casual roundtable conversation, we will explore key questions:
How can communities extend beyond the human?
What elements do we wish to see more of in walking arts?
How can walking arts be a form of care?
Our guests bring diverse perspectives: Robert Coleman explores ecological soundwalks and sound art, while Jo Scott uses sonic experiences to navigate changing landscapes. Rafael De Balanzo focuses on resilience and ecological transformation through walkshops, and Azucena Momo blends dance, sound, and participatory walking performances. Charlie MacRae-Tod engages in creative pilgrimage, connecting storytelling with long-distance walking, while Noam Assayag explores urban narratives through text, graffiti, and walking as a form of collecting and exchanging ideas.
Featured Artists Bios
Noam Assayag
I am a writer and a translator, born in Paris and based in Athens. Inspired by friends and strangers, my walking practice is curious about what’s on the walls and ground, collecting words and textures for future thoughts and collages. This street hermeneutics will use graffiti as samples and keywords. This scavenging will foster gifts and counter-gifts: activating cities together. @norkhat
Rafael De Balanzo
I am a transdisciplinary artist and scientist-scholar whose practice explores the complexity of our planet and theories of change through the lens of a resilience-thinking approach. Through workshops and walkshops, I engage participants in immersive learning experiences that foster deeper understanding and creative responses to ecological and social transformations.
Robert Coleman
Composer and sound artist Robert Coleman’s work draws from numerous fields such as soundscape studies, site-specific art, field recording, and community and participatory arts. He is currently a PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, where he is supervised by an interdisciplinary team from Sonic Arts and Biological Sciences. Throughout this time, he has been developing his practice of Ecological Soundwalks, and in 2023, he founded The School of Wild Listening, a platform for the discussion and dissemination of ecological sound art.
Charlie MacRae-Tod
Charlie is a performer, filmmaker, and walking artist interested in exploring the relationship between performance, classical storytelling, animate imagination, and long-distance walking. His practice of creative pilgrimage seeks to explore various aspects of spiritual and mythological approaches to walking artistically—through, with, and into an environment.
Azucena Momo
Azucena is a multidisciplinary artist interested in body practices (dance, walking, among others), relational geographies, ecology, poetry, and participatory actions. In 2019, she founded her company Irregulars, with which she has created contemporary dance proposals in public spaces and performances about walking. Her love for orality and the blending of disciplines also leads her to work on sound, podcast, and documentary forms.
Jo Scott
Jo Scott is an artist-researcher based in central Portugal, using creative digital practices to explore our relationship with the other-than-human world. Jo’s latest project is using creative walking practices to explore precarious and changing landscapes in an era of climate crisis, habitat, and biodiversity loss, with a focus on the forest plantations of central Portugal. www.joanneemmascott.com
We look forward to walking through these ideas together—see you at the Café!
Hosts
Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC) is an artistic cooperation project, co-funded by the European Union, Creative Europe, starting in January 2024 for four years. With seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.
WALC builds on the previous work of hundreds of artists and researchers already practicing Walking Arts as a collaborative medium, and having met at the significant previous walking arts events and encounters in Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and during online activities at walk · listen · create.
We acknowledge the support of the EU Creative Europe Cooperation grant program in the framework of the European project WALC (Walking Arts and Local Community).
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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