In this walking performance, the walk takes place at the Beljakovce train station, a village located in the northern part of North Macedonia. This village is specific because it is the final stop of a long-awaited railway line intended to connect North Macedonia with Bulgaria, our EU neighbor. The construction of this railway has been ongoing for nearly three decades, yet it is still unfinished. The line is planned as part of Corridor 8, a major transport route designed to link Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria as a broader effort to improve reginal mobility and connections with EU countries.

According to the European Commission Factsheet from 2024: “Rail Corridor VIII forms the east-west hinterland connection between the Black and the Ionian Seas, passing through Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Albania. With EU financial assistance for project preparation and investment co-financing under the Economic and Investment Plan, North Macedonia and Albania are upgrading the existing lines and constructing the missing links along the corridor to remove bottlenecks, shorten physical distances, increase connectivity and shift more passengers and freight to sustainable modes of transport.”

In the performance, I am walking toward Bulgaria, our EU neighbor that has issued more than a quarter of million passports to citizens of North Macedonia, used as a means of escape- a legal way to migrate and look for better opportunities in other EU countries.

Overall, the train station and unfinished railway function as a metaphor for the social and political stagnation of my country. An unfinished transition from one system to another has left deep marks on North Macedonia, a country that got trapped into a prolonged state of transition. Waiting has become a natural state, whereas walking can be understood as step forward, an action and a movement that challenges that status quo. On my walk, as a way to capture layers of physical traces and memories of the past, I made natural clay and gypsum imprints of the last remaining ruined stop. The sound in the walking performance is recorded with a small audio recorder so that the footsteps are authentically synchronized with my own walking, rather than with the movement of the camera.