Atlantropa-X Walking Visions

Participating Artists: Fay Stevens, Woolgatherer’s collective, George Lazoglou, Lise Brenner, Georgios Paliatsios, Jenny Polak, Regini Gloria, Nikos Lamprinos, Laura Apolonio, Mar Garrido, Vasiliki Sagkioti, Arba Bekhteshi, Anastasia Polychronidou, Anna Piatou, Lydia Asoniti, Ioanna Kalogeraki, Tamsin Grainger, Andrea Jaeger, Ruth Broadbent, Sandra Cowan (CAN), Panagiotis Lezes, Clara Gari, Soazic Guezennec, Dimitra Nikolopoulou, Lia Nalbantidou, Sila Zamani, Ienke Kastelein, Rania Schoretsaniti, Harry Wilson, Sylvie Clairet, Soazic Guezennec, Lydia Matthews, Adonis Volanakis, Klitsa Antoniou, Anna Luyten, Lise Brenner, KIU Collective, Annie Tsevdomaria, Simona Vermeire, Stefaan van Biesen, Geert Vernmeire

Visualizations of Ocean Current Flows Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Refugees Visual Documents Credit: Omega Television Channel, Cyprus, Sound: Demetris Savva
Cut Contemporary Fine Arts Lab
at the Artistic Station in Psarades (Prespes) of the School of Fine Arts in Florina (University of Western Macedonia)
Walking Visions/Visions for Walking (WAC 2023)
Arch. Kyprianos Str.
Prespes/GR
2023-07-03 – 2023-07-10

Atlantropa-X is offering glimpses on the utopian drives and the dystopian fallouts that characterize the Mediterranean area. Atlantropa was a gigantic engineering and colonization idea devised by German architect Herman Sorgel in the 1920s, proposing to drain the Mediterranean forming a European supercontinent. Today, more than ever, the Atlantropa scheme – of forming land bridges in the Mediterranean – seems relevant as it is suddenly fortified by contemporary intensity to remind us of the limits on freedom – migrants and refugees – and the destiny of the inhabitants of this area (surviving amid military, political, economic, social complexities/contrasts, migrations and fluid topographies of rejected, forgotten, unseen and silent memories).

The Walking Visions/Visions for Walking (WAC 2023) is an international art event that will take place from July 3rd to July 9th 2023 in the border area of Prespa for a third time, the previous ones being in 2019 and 2021. The International Encounters/Conference Walking Visions /Visions for Walking are organized by the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, School of Fine Arts, University of Western Macedonia, Greece in collaboration with Made of Walking (VIII) / the Milena principle and Walk Listen Create.

The Encounters/Conference has contributed to the sustainable development of the area with the participation of hundreds of artists, scientists, and art lovers from various countries around the world transforming Prespa into an international art center. The area has obtained an artistic identity related to the contemporary concept of walking and how it transforms art-practices.

The first Walking Arts Encounters/Conference (WAC 2019) focused on “walking bodies” and on physical and perceptible relations to the landscape. The second WAC 2021 brought up a more socio-political perspective, by addressing “walking as a question”. The third WAC Walking Visions /Visions for Walking goes beyond the tangible presence of the body in space, or the different approaches that walking has in addressing socio, political, economic, or ecological issues. We open a third dimension, connected to the main idea of “Walking Visions”. How does walking allow us to access intangible experiences or potential conditions, past, present or future? What are the imaginative and visionary potentials of walking? Towards what future are we walking? How can walking as artistic practice enable new visions?

The participants are affiliated with many universities, museums, research centers, and institutions: Athens School of Fine Arts (EL), Concordia University (CN), Contemporary Art Centre Nau Côclea (SP), Cyprus University of Technology (CY), Deakin University (AU), Florina Conservatory (EL), Hellenic Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EL), Ionion University (EL), Meliti Environmental Education Center (EL), Montclair State University (US), Nakas Conservatory, Thessaloniki (EL), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EL), National Theatre of Greece (EL), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (SG), Parsons School of Design (US), Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) (BE), Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) of Ghent (BE), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) (AU), Smithsonian Institution – National Museum of the American Indian (US), Staffordshire University (UK), Toneelacademie Maastricht, Institute of Performative Arts (NL), Tor Vergata University of Rome (IT), University College Dublin SMARTlab (IE), University of the Arts London (UK), University of Brazilia (BR), University of Corsica (FR), University of East London (UK), University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Lethbridge (CN), University of Minho (PT), University of Patras (EL), University of Quebec in Montreal (CN), University of the Peloponnese (EL), University of Thessaly (EL), University of West Attica (EL), University of Western Macedonia (EL), Urban School of San Francisco (US).