All around - Along the walk

MAY 2024
BERLIN, GERMANY

The main idea of the Conference is to share the knowledge gained within Along the Walk and to contribute to the capacity building of European professionals working in the sector of performing arts. It is to share the results of the research, to speak of and work with the methods developed during the project. It is a conference on deceleration, it is a conference on new models of artistic creation and production in the field of performing arts, based on the concepts of deceleration, environmental awareness, social inclusion and intercultural dialogue.

The Conference is 4 days long.

Every day the program consists of either a workshop or lectures and panel discussions and a performance in the evening. The workshops are devised by the 12 international artists of the project: each of the 6 duos teaches a workshops for 10 participants, based on their Walks and the research done within them. One day of the Conference will be devoted to invited guest lecturers who deal with deceleration within different fields bringing in their contributions in forms of lectures, talks or performative lectures: researchers from action research field, neurosciences, psychology and philosophy. Another two events that will take place at the conference are a presentation of the project and all The Walks and the release of The Book in the form of a panel discussion with artists and the editor.

How to participate?

Any European professional in the field of performing arts can attend the Conference, specifically artists and producers interested in working in rural areas and interested in artistic improvisation and participatory art. The workshops are open to 60 participants from all over Europe. The selection is made with a focus on diversity: art professionals coming from different countries, gender balance, various ages – both emerging artists and mature professionals, various artistic backgrounds, urban and rural area based cultural workers, diversity in economic background. The participants are invited not to fly but to arrive to the Conference by other transportational means, taking the time of the travel also for preparation and reflection.

More information (content, dates, registrations, etc.) will be published on 01 October.

The project’s output that remains after its completion is a book, a compendium of various multi-genre texts and documentations. The editor of the book is Samo Oleami, a Ljubljana based theorist of contemporary performing arts and a theatre critic. Together with three more writers Andrea Zabric, Metod Zupan and Lenart Sušnik, they will follow and influence the project from the start, observing all the artistic and research activities and also work with the artists on formats of documentation.

Samo Oleami writes :

« This Book is a documentation of methods and approaches developed within the project, that are based on the concepts of deceleration, environmental awareness, social inclusion and intercultural dialogue; a documentation of how these approaches were received, created and developed in participative artistic action in the European rural areas and what are the findings of this journey; a compendium of various multi-genre texts and documentations – in writing, drawing or photography – produced in the artistic process. Understanding the logic of the performative actions as open-ended processes in which enter – the history of performers, the path they’re taking, people they encounter and the history of the land itself, documentation of the project is likewise intertwining with artistic actions. Firstly, each of the artistic duos finds its own format of documenting their walks – for instance with written fairy tales, introspections of a pilgrim, or with transcribed interviews with passers by, drawings, photographs, impressions and so on. In the same way the artistic walks leave traces in the geography they traverse and in the people they meet and encounter, they also leave traces in writing, drawing, sound recording and photographs. The multi-genre compendium thus also represents the different artistic approaches of each walking duo and different circumstances they encounter.[…]

[…]Apart from textual and visual material produced by the artists themselves or collectively in the artistic process, the compendium also features contributions by outside writers, however they also need to be intertwined with artistic practice. One type of texts thus includes materials which artists have used in their preparations for the walks, and which would thus influence the dramaturgy of each project and thus leave traces in the multi-genre documentation as well. The second type of text is produced by invited writers who engage themselves with the performers and walk with them for a shorter period of 3 days. With such a format we wish to subvert the notion of an objective outside gaze which presents factual documentation as unproblematic – instead the material collected follows the traces of social spaces, interactions with locals and be intertwined with the artistic methods chosen. The durational nature of the projects also empowers the notion of experience – the passage of time, the behaviours being created through artistic practices and engagements with audience, the psychical experience as opposed to online presence – all of which we hope to capture in the multigenre format of the compendium from which a reader will not only gather information, but also experience holistically. Each artistic walk has its section including: the map of the walk, artistic methods and strategies, conceptual starting points, findings and feedback from the encounters with audiences, multi-genre documentation and contributions by visiting writers. »

The Book will be published in cooperation with a Slovenian publishing house and will be released in April 2024, during The Conference. It will be available in printed version, as well as in an e-Book format.