TRANSHUMANCE, NOMADISMS AND MIGRATIONS
International conference / funded invitation (presentations and workshops). 1-6 July 2024
Universitat de Girona / Museu Darder de Banyoles / WALC / Nau Côclea

Walking Art and Relational Geographies – ‘transhumance, nomadisms and migrations’

“Living beings, in an adaptive strategy to environmental conditions, have had to move at one time or another. In this broad inventory of life we find animal migrations, pastoral transhumance, the migrations of human communities (escapes, exiles, voluntary migrations and migratory imaginaries), nomadic life systems (which have practically disappeared in our world) and territorial explorations (both past and present). For the Walking Arts and Relational Geographies Encounters 2024, we propose to explore all these movements, their differences and their similarities – in search of what we humans have in common with other living beings.”

Conference directors: Geert Vermeire and Clara Garí

PROGRAMME

1 July
In-person event incorporating an online WALC Café funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme, hosted by Geert Vermeire.
“With the participation of Luce Choules (visual and sound artist, writer), Igor Binsbergen (sound and music artist), and Clara Garí (walking artist director of Nau Côclea and and co-director of Walking Art and Relational Geographies). A conversation about itinerancy, about paths, about our complex relationship with the dynamic processes of the earth, highlighting the impermanence of environmental and social structures. We will follow in the footsteps of the Grand Tour project, which for 10 years has been travelling the Catalan lands on foot. The event will include soundscapes generated by the walking on the Grand Tour.”

2-3 July
Two full days of presentations at the Universitat de Girona, Facultat de Lletres, Sala de Graus.
Keynote Radhika Subramaniam – ‘Heel to Hallux: Earthwriting’
“The footprint is formed in the seesaw from heel to big toe. It is as the foot moves forward that it leaves its imprint behind. How has this mobile walking artifact become the metaphor for the weight of the human? Traversing the rich terrain of the footprint’s many appearances, this talk asks what political and ethical possibilities exist for us as walkers on this planet.”

4 July
Starting from the city of Girona, a long-distance walk will end at the lake of Banyoles.
“The total distance, about 20 kilometres, has almost no gradient. The plan is to walk it in 6 hours including stops and artistic interventions. It is an easy route on forest tracks and a few moments on small roads. It has been designed expressly to show the exit from an urban environment, the holm oak forest and the opening towards a different region, the Pla de l’Estany, very well irrigated by underground water.”

5-6 July
Two full days of presentations at the Museu Darder de Banyoles.
Keynote Luce Choules – ‘Material Fields: surveys, mappings and counter-cartographies’
“This live performance uses a format of projected imagery and narrated script to invite an audience on a poetic journey across the natural, managed and urban territories of Europe and beyond. Through detailed surveys of the structures, systems and living patterns of sensory environments, this work moves over the fabric of the Earth to reveal encounters with its surface.”

Funding support:
EU Creative Europe Programme
Universitat de Girona
Museu Darder de Banyoles

Links:
Link to Art del Caminar website
Link to WALC website
Link to Nau Côclea website

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WORK

Material Fields: surveys, mappings and counter-cartographies

Performance / Live Event (projected photographic imagery and poetic script). 2024
Keynote lecture (1 hour)