TWB 6 is an event organized in the frame of WALC – Walking Arts and Local Communities, with the support of the EU Creative Europe Cooperation grant program.

 ‘Communities of Change’ 

TWB approaches local communities in the plural sense, not limiting a community to a static, single or isolated group. Local communities are, but at the same time are more than, the sum of their residents. Communities develop over time, including students, local artists, minorities, under-represented groups, migrants and refugees. Living in a community means constantly rethinking where you live and who you live with. Central to TWB6 is the possibility of movement and change. A specific focus of TWB is on the fragile social and natural ecology of the environment in which we live. Although it is a city, Guimarães also includes and is in close proximity to rural areas, constituting a hybrid and fragmented landscape in a dispersed and rich territory. Restlessness, through connection with place and through the art of walking, is what defines TWB.

The Walking Body (TWB) is an international meeting of walking artists. The 2025 meeting is dedicated to ‘communities of change’, communities that are plural, on the move, and sensitive to issues of the social and natural ecology of the environment in which we live. 

TWB explores local communities as dynamic entities in constant transformation, connecting people, territories and ecologies through movement, the art of walking and the relationship between the city and the landscape of Guimarães

TWB will take place from 26th of March to 12th of April in Guimarães, in Bairro C, with the meeting point at the Garagem Avenida Gallery/School of Architecture, Art and Design.
TWB includes a week of walkshops, a round table with the invited artists and an exhibition (26 March to 17 April). 

This event is free of charge. Anyone interested in art and the act of walking can take part in these actions by registering on the form: https://forms.gle/HtAYpJsdvugMpSRU8

The walkshops will take place throughout the week from 7th to 12th of April, on walks around the area with a focus on Bairro C, and the meeting point will be the Avenida EAAD Garage Gallery (Av. Dom Afonso Henriques 250). TWB has 7 artists taking part in the workshops: Geert Vermeire (BE), Jordi Lafon (ES), Miguel B Duarte (PT), Montsita Rierola (ES), Natacha Antão (PT), Stefaan Van Biesen (BE) and Rosa Soares (PT).

in loving memory

BABAK FAKHAMZADEH

 

Memory is a cornerstone of human existence, shaping identity, guiding decisions, and connecting us to the past. Remembering fosters a sense of self and continuity, allowing us to learn from experiences and build personal and collective narratives. Positive memories provide joy and resilience, while collective memories bind communities through shared history and traditions. Conversely, forgetting is equally vital, decluttering the mind and enabling focus on the present. It also aids emotional healing by letting go of negative or traumatic experiences, fostering forgiveness and growth, especially in an era where technology preserves the past indefinitely.

Creating loving memories enriches lives and leaves a lasting legacy. This project commemorates global locations with plaques, reflecting on the duality of remembrance: who remembers, what is remembered, and how these acts shape new experiences for others. By occupying public space with these plaques, the project echoes the Situationists’ concept of détournement, repurposing everyday environments to provoke thought and challenge conventional perceptions of memory and place. The plaques invite passersby to engage with the spaces around them, transforming mundane locations into sites of reflection and connection.

Balancing remembering and forgetting allows us to cherish the past while actively shaping a fulfilling future, enhancing personal well-being and positively impacting those around us. Through this interplay, we not only honor our memories but also reimagine public spaces as dynamic arenas for collective meaning and interaction.

 

Putting this work together would not have been possible on my own. Many thanks to Natalia, Irene, Andrew, Fred, Vera, Tatiana, Avi, Jeff, Valentina, Maritza, Sandra, Joost, Ameya, Gitta, and Benno.
 
Gallery Garagem Avenida
 
Babak Fakhamzadeh (NL/IR) - March 27 - 2:30 pm

The Walking Body sound walk/drive workshop/lecture

 

This combination workshop/lecture by Babak Fakhamzadeh at The Walking Body 6 and loosely linked to the exhibition “in loving memory”, focuses on collaborative and locative sound exploration of place. It consists of two sessions. During the first session, on 27 March, Babak will introduce his artistic practice, influenced by the Situationist International, and will highlight the WLC network for walking artists. Students will be invited to contribute to a sound walk/drive along Guimarães’ bus route 4, by submitting short audio pieces, such as texts, poems, memories, or soundscapes, via the write @ WLC platform.

Submissions can be in English or Portuguese.

Over the following three weeks, students will create and submit their contributions, which Babak will integrate into a sound walk/drive, a draft of which will be presented in the second session on xx April. This session will serve as a space for reflection and discussion, allowing students to share their experiences, and engage with the tools and locative technology involved. The workshop fosters collaboration and experimentation in sound-based locative storytelling within the context of walking and mobility in the city of Guimarães. 

 

The working language of both sessions will be English.

Jordi Lafon (ES) & Montsita Rierola (ES)- April 7, 8, 11 & 12

Criss-Crossing

 

The Criss-Crossing project fluctuates between different registers of the artistic tradition. Firstly, it takes as a reference the fact of walking as an aesthetic practice, concretised in drifting, capable of stimulating observation and reflection on our surroundings. Simultaneously, it incorporates the use of photography to generate a record of the experience of walking through the streets of Guimarães. Finally, on returning to the exhibition space, where the workshop will take place, each of the selected images will be projected onto the wall with the aim of drawing in pencil the details that have caught our attention. The idea is to do this by following the lines of the chosen elements, which can be interwoven with the other previous drawings, to create a mural weave. The drawing grows and becomes a universal act of representation, a collective rehearsal that prolongs and expands the experience of the different drifts of the groups involved, to bring together a diverse, rich, heterogeneous voice that welcomes a community.

 

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Rosa Inês Soares (PT) - April 8 - 2:30 pm

Walking the Unspoken

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This gamified sensory walk invites participants into an embodied dialogue with one another, the landscape, and the unseen and unspoken challenges of navigating the world from different perspectives. Rooted in research and personal experience with disability, this work explores the intersection of trauma-informed design, somatic movement-based practices, and socially engaged walking art.

The activity will be ideally set in an outdoor natural environment transitioning from an urban starting point to a more remote landscape. It is imagined as a circular walk which integrates native participants as well as other conference participants, as to also reinforce connection between place and community. Designed for a small/medium group, to encourage intimate engagement. Duration of activity and participant number can be defined together with the organisation, depending on the route chosen, climate and specific community needs.This walk can also be repeated with different participants.

Walking becomes both a sensory-seeking experience and an act of witnessing—an invitation to step into another’s lived experience and reimagine how communities move together. Through play, restriction, and shared discovery, this project challenges accessibility structures and highlights walking as a transformative act of inclusion.

Participants begin together, unhindered, but as the walk unfolds, the path transforms through imposed, yet unspoken, constraints that mimic real-world limitations experienced by neurodivergent individuals. As the walk progresses, one participant at the time, takes on an obstacle/limitation, which they must embody rather than verbally communicating to the group. This could be something as having to avoid direct sunlight, or stepping backward for every two steps forward, not being able to step in stones—simulating real-world limitations faced by neurodivergent individuals. The goal of these disruptions is to challenge ideas of ease, effort, and the need for collective adaptation, fostering deeper experiential understanding of inclusion as the group must finish the walk together. Along the journey there will be strategic checkpoints to reset (remove obstacles) as well as diving into communal activities to nurture connection and facilitate conversations often left in the margins, such as tokenism in accessibility, financial strains, social norms, alternative communication, etc. These will start as movement prompts, diving into conversation and then reflection.

Besides highlighting accessibility needs in a different light and prompting taboo conversations, this is also an invitation for locals to experience a familiar path with different senses and for everyone to consider the potential of walking not only as a artistic, research or participatory tool for connection and reflection but also as a catalyst for reimagining shared spaces and collective agency, particularly in collaboration with communities experiencing heightened vulnerability.

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Stefaan van Biesen (BE) & Geert Vermeire (BE) - April 9 - 10 am to 12:30 am

Tell Me Your Name

 

 

“Tell Me Your Name” is a performative walk and artistic act by Stefaan van Biesen and Geert Vermeire, inviting local inhabitants to name wild plants growing in their environment—between street tiles, along walls, or by the roadside—based on their own poetic intuition and personal feelings.

Participants are encouraged to reflect on what a plant means to them, whether in relation to themselves or their community. Using nameplates similar to those found in garden shops, we mark these plants, challenging the notion of “weeds” and instead recognizing them as valuable, deserving of attention and care—extending this awareness to all living beings, both human and more-than-human.

The workshop also addresses the misconception that plants don’t hear or are unaware of humans. Scientific research reveals that plants perceive vibrations and communicate, reminding us that listening is fundamental—not only in bridging the divide between human and non-human life but also fostering that listening to each other is a catalyst for positive change.

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Meeting point: Garagem Avenida Gallery
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Stefaan van Biesen (BE) & Geert Vermeire (BE) - April 9 - 2 pm to 4 pm

Writing / Drawing / Walking / Reflecting / Observing
Walk/Lecture/Performance

 

 

Since 1990, Stefaan Van Biesen has documented his walks through drawings, which evolve into installations, texts, videos, and photographs. He views walking as a subjective thought process within urban and natural landscapes. Beyond being an art form, drawing is a powerful tool for learning, enhancing perception, memory, and understanding. Van Biesen’s practice explores urban and human spaces as philosophical and sensory experiences, with drawings serving as reflections on place, memory, and vegetation—ranging from quick sketches to detailed compositions.

Collaborating with writer Geert Vermeire for over 20 years, Van Biesen and Vermeire merge walking, writing and drawing, emphasizing collective creation and redefining artistic boundaries. Their lecture/performance invites participants to a walk and to contribute to a collaborative drawing/writing piece, which will evolve on location and afterwards remotely in dialogue with the artists, becoming part of an ongoing exhibition and creative exchange.

Natacha Antão (PT) - April 8, 9, 10 and 11

Why do we need a tree?

 

Porque precisamos de uma árvore? why do we need a tree?

Representation can be a tool for desire, encounter or recognition. In this workshop, participants are invited to think of a tree they would like to plant in Guimarães. Where would that tree live? Why is this tree important? What do we need a tree for? What does it look like?

I invite everyone to come and draw their tree and tell us where it should be and what its place is in our landscape. We’ve got paper and pencils and we’re willing to give you as much time as you need. If you have the time or the interest, I’d like to record your story in a short testimonial. 

At the end of the workshop we intend to create an online map with all the drawings and testimonies collected so that we can build a community landscape with all our trees. 

Number of participants: no limit. Participants have pencils and paper at their disposal and will be interviewed at the end. 

Duration: continuous, concurrent with the opening of the space.
Materials: Paper, markers 
Meeting point: Garagem Avenida Gallery
Meeting time: concurrent with the opening of the space

Miguel B Duarte (PT) - April 10 - 8 am

EntreCampi

This workshop is based on a long walking experience (approximately 25 km) between Braga and Guimarães, connecting, in particular, the university campuses. A slow-paced journey aims to reclaim the pleasure of walking as an everyday gesture and to develop a heightened awareness of the diversity of stimuli in the landscape.

Beyond the individual experience, the long walk provides an opportunity for participants to connect, stepping away from daily obligations and creating space for the exchange of affinities. Often, it is the surrounding geographical context that fosters these experiences.

Along a diverse route, oscillating between a spiritual experience and a physical challenge, sensations of crossing, distance and proximity, diffusion and gathering emerge. These contrasts shape both the journey and the transformations that may arise from it.

 

Number of participants: 30
Duration: 6-8 hours 
Materials: water, fresh/dry fruit
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Communities of Change

 

TWB approaches local communities in the plural sense, not limiting a community to a static, single or isolated group. Local communities are, but at the same time are more than, the sum of their residents. Communities develop over time, including students, local artists, minorities, under-represented groups, migrants and refugees. Living in a community means constantly rethinking where you live and who you live with. Central to TWB6 is the possibility of movement and change. A specific focus of TWB is on the fragile social and natural ecology of the environment in which we live. Although it is a city, Guimarães also includes and is in close proximity to rural areas, constituting a hybrid and fragmented landscape in a dispersed and rich territory. Restlessness, through connection with place and through the art of walking, is what defines TWB.

Tópics on debate:

Transition & Transformation
Tensions & Conflicts
Adaptation & Resistance
Creativity & Innovation
Identity & Memory

 

Babak Fakhamzadeh (NL/IR)    https://babasprojects.com/inlovingmemory/#grid
was working in ICT4D before it had a name, never really left it, and has, since, created solutions for NGOs and news organisations on 5 continents.
He brought photomarathons to Africa and won the Highway Africa new media award. To date, he is the only person to have won the UN World Summit Award three times.
He has a keen interest in creating mobile solutions for urban discovery that move decision making powers into the hands of the individual. This, along the lines of the thoughts and ideals of the Situationists.
In 2018, he co-founded the online platform walk · listen · create, a network organisation for walking artists and artist walkers.

Geert Vermeire (BE)    https://supercluster.eu/geertvermeire/
Geert Vermeire is a poet, artist, curator, and cultural producer specializing in walking arts, sound art, and locative media. With a nomadic practice spanning Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Brazil, his recent work has centered on ecological intelligence, participatory walking art, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Since 2019, Vermeire has co-directed the biannual International Walking Arts Meetings/Conferences in Prespa, Greece, which has brought together over 600 artists and researchers. This event fosters artistic exchange through walking, sound, and locative media in the ecologically significant Prespa region. Building on this, he co-founded the Walking Arts and Relational Geographies Encounter in Catalonia in 2022, now preparing for its third edition in 2026.
This goes along with co-organizing The Walking Body, an international workshop and artist’s meeting on the arts of walking in Guimarães, Portugal, together with Natacha Antão Moutinho and Miguel Bandeira Duarte (Lab2PT / University of Minho). This collaboration also led to the 2020 International conference *Fluid Bodies / Drifting Spaces* in Guimarães, further expanding the discourse on walking as an artistic practice.
In 2019, Vermeire co-founded walk listen create, a global platform for walking artists, which has since grown to a network of over 6,000 registered users worldwide. That same year, he launched Locative Media Supercluster, an educational platform exploring collaborative mapping and media walks in response to planetary crises. This initiative has led to partnerships with King’s College London, the University of Canberra, and COP27 in Egypt, among others.
Since 2024, he has been the artistic co-coordinator of the EU-funded Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC) project (2024-2027). This initiative, spanning five countries, is establishing an International Center for Walking Arts, connecting European residencies, workshops, and exhibitions while integrating locative media and online learning.
From 2025 to 2026, Vermeire is curating the Yamuri project (France/Mexico), an immersive sound art installation inspired by the walking rituals of the Rarámuri people and Antonin Artaud, promoting artistic exchange between France and Mexico.
Throughout his recent work, Vermeire has remained deeply engaged in ecological, technological, and community-based artistic practices, expanding the role of walking and sound as tools for learning, activism, and artistic innovation. His interdisciplinary collaborations continue to shape the evolving landscape of locative media and walking arts worldwide.
Interview with Geert Vermeire :
https://www.livingmaps.org/geert-vermeire

Jordi Lafon (ES)    https://www.jordilafon.net/   https://derivamussol.net/
He is an interdisciplinary artist, professor, and cultural mediator. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis, Walking [to] Explore: Proposals on Art, Education, and Territory – Deriva Mussol 2021-2026. He is a co-founder of the artistic collective Deriva Mussol and the publishing house Camí and collaborates regularly with various academic institutions.
His work establishes a relationship between objects, people, and their surroundings, conceiving a narrative of matter, space, and time—inscribed within a landscape understood as a stage for actions where relationships of affection and conflict, poetry and politics unfold.
In his projects, he also proposes walking, drifting, participation, and collaboration as ways to explore learning possibilities through the sharing of different “creative” experiences in contemporary contexts.

Miguel B Duarte (PT)    https://miguelbduarte.wordpress.com/
Miguel B Duarte is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Art, and Design at the University of Minho and a researcher at Lab2PT (Landscape, Heritage, and Territory Laboratory, R&D unit). As a researcher and artist specializing in Drawing and Walking Art, he co-organized the Drifting Bodies Fluent Spaces conference in 2020 and The Walking Body workshops (walk.lab2pt.net) since 2018. He is also a co-founder and researcher of WALC (Walking Arts & Local Communities), a European project.

Montsita Rierola (ES)    https://derivamussol.net/
She is a visual artist and professor of artistic didactics at the Faculty of Education at UVIC-UCC. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from UB with the thesis: Goula. Art, Games, and Memory. From an Industrial Adventure to an Artistic Experience. She is a member of the artistic group Deriva Mussol.
Driven by the desire to explore ways of transcribing the experience of walking as an artistic practice, Rierola creates drawings in sketchbooks while walking, translating the experience into lines as if she were a seismograph. In different contexts, always in motion and within the concept of travel, the artist makes marks in full stride on ceramic supports shaped like her own abdomen.
The Colors of the Grand Tour is the result of collecting different soils to capture the richness of the territory’s tonalities. She processes the gathered earth from various places to extract pigments, binding them with gum arabic to create a box filled with watercolor pans. Finally, she sculpts small spheres using saliva and the collected soils, thus defining the color of the place she traverses.

Natacha Antão (PT)    https://natachaantao.wordpress.com/
Natacha Antão is an artist, researcher integrated in Lab2PT (Landscape, Heritage and Territory Lab) and teaches at the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho (EAAD), since 2006. She is editor of PSIAX, a journal active since 2002, publishing studies and reflections on drawing and image. Her most recent interests focus on artistic and research practices through walking, developing since 2018 the experimental laboratory The Walking Body (+info at https://walk.lab2pt.net). She also investigates the impact of the practice of walking on pedagogical and artistic innovation, at the crossroads with landscape, drawing and representation.

Rosa Soares (PT)
Rosa Soares is a researcher and facilitator specializing in participatory design, movement-based methodologies, and social innovation. With five years of experience working in the social sector in the UK, she has collaborated with vulnerable communities, including migrants and excluded young people, using creative and inclusive approaches to foster engagement and agency. As a URBACT Expert in Social Innovation and a former Digital Inclusion Officer for Manchester City Council, she explored walking as a research tool to map local narratives and deepen community connections.
Returning home to pursue a Master’s in Service Design, she sought to expand her design practice while exploring embodied approaches to participation. She became a yoga and therapeutic movement teacher, integrating movement-based methodologies into her research and facilitation work. Her current research focuses on the intersection of walking, neurodivergence, and participatory design, examining how sensory experiences and inclusive walking methodologies can foster accessibility, connection, and belonging in public spaces and participatory projects.

Stefaan van Biesen (BE)    stefaanvanbiesen.com
Stefaan van Biesen is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is deeply rooted in walking as an artistic and philosophical act. His work aligns with the nomadic spirit of Renaissance artists who traveled across Europe, using their journeys as laboratories of thought. A striking historical example is Albrecht Dürer, whose travels inspired artistic exchanges, drawings, and intellectual discourse. Similarly, van Biesen’s artistic explorations generate a rich tapestry of ideas, sketches, artifacts, and encounters, forming an ongoing dialogue with people, places, and cultures.
A significant part of his artistic practice is dedicated to collaborations with artists, scientists, and experts from various disciplines. His work is deeply engaged with its surroundings, using walking as both a social and artistic instrument—an act of observation, reflection, and creation that interacts with urban and natural environments.
His work is present in private collections and museums across Europe, Brazil, and China. His artistic work has been presented in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Brazil, the USA, and China.

The New Wave of Walking Artists?

 

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

9.04 / 5pm

Online event
Free ticket at
https://walklistencreate.org/walkingevent/the-new-wave-of-walking-artists/

 

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TWB is also an artistic and educational project. We are interested in ‘disruptive education’, bringing into play collective thinking and local and ancestral knowledge, in a connection with our environment (social and ecological), broadening ecologies towards the social perspective of a healthy society, in migratory movement and in potential change. 

As well as offering a space for international and local artists to collaborate with transient communities, TWB wants to bring the art of walking together with contemporary needs. As a collective project, it is based on new forms of artistic expression, through art that comes from within and through the body, in communion with communities and through the fragile lands where artists walk.

Although walking emerged as a powerful art form in the 20th century, in the 21st century it has become an extremely diverse and complex medium. Today, the art of walking functions not only as a theme, practice or policy, but also as a tool for balance, for promoting social change and for strengthening ecosystems, both natural and social. As an evolving art form, the art of walking itself is on the move. TWB 2025 is on the move. In this TWB we want to create new communities, temporary communities on the move, to travel through physical and metaphorical landscapes of transformation and discovery by inviting symbolic and physical displacement from one place to another, communities on the move.