WAP instigators and curtors BERG DUO/Anna Viola Hallberg & Ami Skånber are the initiators of the program. They selected more than 25 artists to paricipate in WAP23 stretching over three months. For the itteratrion 2024 14 artist were selected.In addition they invited guest walkers. >>>

WAP24 June Edition Lead walker and co-curator: John Schuerman is an environmental artist and independent curator. His artwork reflects his deep interest in nature both human and nonhuman. His aesthetic style and social consciousness formed as he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. His primary art practices are Walking and Drawing, which he uses to examine his community’s physical and psychic landscapes. As a curator he’s produced over 30 exhibitions across the Midwest on topics that address current concerns in our collective psyche. >>>

WAP24 September Edition Lead walker and co-curator: Antonia Aitken based in lutruwita /Tasmania, Australia  since 2014. Through a combination of field research and studio based practice my work is investigating social and environmental questions about how we engage with and interpret our relationships with place in a contemporary Australian context. How do we explore the complex and entangled imprint of settler colonialism and attempt to build ethical dialogue with the land and its communities. >>>

WALKING AS PRACTICE/WAP is a process-based art residency, where we delve into each others’ knowledges and things we encounter together on Burch island/Björkö

Interventions weave across different registers of time and site. The focus is on how walking is interlocked in our practices. Fieldworks and seminars are jointly done to locate and entangle structures, narratives and forces. We believe in a safe and friendly attitude as part of the art scene we share.

BKN fosters a peer-based environment: “thinking together, learning together” - a resource and semi public forum to explore and experiment.  Jointly, we form a transformative, dynamic space for art that engages with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings; the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area.

Program dissemination will be in an online format and a series of open studios/walks as engagement with the local community.

BKN is an artist run  configuration of a transformative, dynamic space for art engaging with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings where the forest meets the sea, way-finding in The Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden. WAP25 might also take place on Björkö or perhaps a new location.

The walking scene in Sweden is in the forming or resurfacing. The purpose with this process-based program is to invite (inter)national artists to further this development together with a core-group connected to Björkö Konstnod/BKN. WAP methodology of fieldworks and share sessions are carried out to locate and entangle structures, narratives and forces via the intersection of the arts and walking.

The curatorial framework opens up for participating artists to influence the direction and leaned towards new materialism, ie rethinking dualisms through a non-hierarchal approach. Reviewing the development (share sessions, walks, and work made available to public), ”Spaces of Anticipation”  is the theme for WAP24. We also foresee that after WAP24 the platform could continue to focus on aspects of artistic research at the cusp of walking and the arts.  In 2023 the focus was on "Attentive Walking"

Keywords: walking, asymmetry, entanglement, beyond violence, not-knowing, desire, nature, responsibility, deep listening, close seeing, territory, contested sites

After walking the same area for 5 years it brings (two wth WAP) challenges to do the same  walks with out experience boredom, walking a limited area surrounded by water it is indeed a challenge to treat the area with frresh eyes, with anticipation.  The curatorial text will be avaliable from Octobe (to be linked )

Parallell to the focus on walks during WAP we have also continued Ami Skångbergs focus on Experimental Pilgrimage. Ami has during WAP done several Suriashi on Björkö one of them in the context of a walk along Saint Olaf Waterway/Viking Trail on Väddö, Sweden. 

Forming their approach to WAP, Ami Skånbeg and Anna Viola Hallberg have in addition walked part of Kumano Kodo in Japan  (July 24) as part of the screendance/video essay Bouyancy. They participated in Performance Philosopers presentation at World Congress of Philosophy in Rome (Aug 24) with Unmadness. In Rome they also did Suriashi over  Ponte Fabricio (Tiber Island Bridge), the oldest bridge in Rome, built in 62 BC. by Lucius Fabricius as part of teh growing number of videos for the installation  Embodying Hashigkari - immanent Encounters with Briges. Futher more in Rome t

The Centennial Walk took place on August 1st 2024, at 5 pm (Rome time) six artists made an artistic intervention to manifest the fact that it was exactly 100 years ago since the Surrealists began their walks for disorienting the urban space and walking without itinerary. They often began their walk while drinking champagne. Artistic walking was at that time also part of the Olympics, and competing walkers were asked to drink champagne to have a healthy body. As critical as we - as walking artists - are of the excluding and privileged white men's walks in Paris, we do want to acknowledge important walking acts where art and the city were involved. We thus invite walking artists to acknowledge each Aug 1sts, drinking whatever preferable drink, for the next one hundred years.

September brought on Sculpture You  at Stephens house and gardens in London, curated by Rebekah Dean. The score was in addition recorded in Rome for artists in addition to the score constituting the participation in the sculpture trail.

Berg Duo started working together with Walking is Also Space workhshop for Onebywalking Korpoström, Finland 2023. The workshop as a text will be released in an anthology 2025.

BERG DUO portfolio >>>