walking with proximity
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We Tread Together With Proximity – Exploring the Boundaries of Art and Walking.
Entanglement and Proximity is in focus during 2026. Our core is Thinking Together Learning Together.
Join WAP26 program in August. >>>
WAP PROGRAM
WALKING AS PRACTICE PROGRAM
INTRO WAP
In the fall of 2023 our first residency for walking artists took place in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden. The venue was a node for the artis in a rural coastal context. Each walking year held a research topic that artist approached from their specific practice. In 2025 some of us formed a coalition and participated in the artist run art fair in Stockholm.
WAP PROGRAM
WAP is a process-based art residency, where we delve into each others’ knowledges and things we encounter together on Burch island/Björkö. Together we explore proximity through artistic expressions in the field of walking practices. Each year has its own theme/focus. Part of participants are from WAPC and part from an open call.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.
The framework of the WAP Program is intentionally porous and co-constituted, allowing participating artists to shape its direction. It draws on posthumanist and new materialist perspectives, especially those concerned with dismantling entrenched dualisms through non-hierarchical and relational approaches.In this context, walking is treated simultaneously as an artistic medium and as a methodological framework for critical and creative investigation. As artists move through lived environments, they explore how agency may be extended to human and nonhuman others, to place, and to ecological processes. These practices emphasize relational care and collective attunement as strategies for cultivating co-presence and emergent forms of togetherness.
WAP Programs at BKN 2023-2025
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.WAP26 – Entanglement and Proximity
WAP25 –Waking As Passion – Embodied Thinking
WAP24 –Spaces of Anticipation
WAP23 – Attentative WalkingKeywords: walking, asymmetry, entanglement, beyond violence, not-knowing, desire, nature, responsibility, deep listening, close seeing, territory, contested sites
Above screenshot of WAP23/24/25 expositions on Research Catalogue. Each artist developed their own exposition as a way of remembering the work produced during that specific WAP. 2023-25 we had BKN on Björkö, Sweden as a base >>>
WAP on RC
Direct links to some Expositions on Research Catalogue:
Janice Jensen, Bernadita Bennet,Cliff Andrade, Bergo Duo,Hayley Whelan,
Juanma González, Antonia Aitken,Rebekah Dean, Heather Kapplow
Elisabeth Billander, John Schuerman,
Nahelli Chavoya, Aurike Quintelier
WAP26 PROGRAM, STOCKHOLM + NOMADIC
WAP26 Program
Entanglement and Proximity
After three years on Björkö in the northern Stockholm archipelago, where the artists had their own studio WAP26 signals a deliberate methodological shift. The project abandons a stable geographic anchoring in favor of a nomadic mode of operation, positioning transience as both an epistemic method and a political condition. Traversing the landscape we will take turn leading walks influenced by one’s practice and the curatorial position of walking approached as a form of situated attention – an embodied way of encountering territory, history, and power under conditions of rupture and uncertainty. Participation is grounded in shared presence, contribution, and collective engagement facilitated by walking and talking together.
Application, curatorial framework etc >>>
Keywords: Walking | Political Aesthetics | Embodied Knowledge | Exile | Archipelago | Fragmentation | Imaginative Cartography | Spacial Temporality | Political Aesthetics | Relational Ethics | Environmental Attunement | New Materialism | Relational Ethics
The Stockholm Archipelago consist of, islets and skerries and covers approximately 1,700 km² of which approximately 530 km² is land. Municipality of Stockholm itself is situated on more than 10 islands.
WAP25 PROGRAM, BJÖRKÖ
WAP25
WAP25 program at BKN
Björkö, Sweden
Curatorial Framework: Walking With Passion – Embodied Thinking
Sister Forest (QR code based Art Trail)
Dates: June 16 to July 7 (1, 2 or 3 weeks)
- WAP25 program took place during the wide nights at BKN in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden.
- WAP 25 Supermarket where the theme was Passion. WAPC/WAP Coalition was formed for this event in April.
- WAP25 Research Catalogue (link to be announced) with individual expositions per artist on “Walking With Passion – Embodied Thinking”
- WAP(BKN) became an official node as part of Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC) project >>>
- More on Special page for WAP25 program >>>
WAP24 PROGRAM, BJÖKRÖ
WAP24
Program at BKN
Björkö, Sweden
Curatorial Framework: Spaces of Anticipation
- Venue for 2024 was BKN/Björkö Konstnod in Sweden
- Co-curators John Schuerman, United States and Antonia Aitken Australia
- Research Catalogue
- WAP24 in collaboration with ABF Norrtälje, several public walks and share sessions
- Self Directed walkers during several periods in 2024.
WAP23 PROGRAM, BJÖRKÖ
WAP23
Program at BKN
Björkö, Sweden
September-November
Curatorial Framework: Atentative Walking
- SHORTLISTED WAP23 on RC (fall of 2024) for The Marŝarto Awards recognize exceptional walking art.
- WAP23 RC covers more than 25 international artists participating in the initial edition of the program Walking As Practice in Sweden. The theme for the explorations was “Attentive Walking”. Each artist made an exposition in Research Catalogue.
- WAP23 in collaboration with ABF Norrtälje, several public walks and share sessions (September – November)
- WAP was formed in April 2023 by Berg Duo as a program at AiR BKN/Björkö Konstnod, Sweden. An
- Björkö Konstnod group exhibition Norrtälje Konst I Ån, curated by Anna Viola Hallberg. An outdoor exhibition along the river in Norrtälje, Sweden. Some of the works based in walking.
- Venue for 2023 was BKN/Björkö Konstnod in Sweden
- Berg Duo together with local organizations on Björkö, Sweden arranges Darkness Walk (live torches) to the quarry, Oct, 2023
- With studio support from Region Stockholm. Public outreach with ABF Norrtälje.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
WAP and WAPC
We develop participatory walks, we make art works for exhibitions, we do presentations and works for web sharing.
WAP COALITION WALKS AN PRESENTATION OFF SITE
initiatives develop between more than two of the WAP artist:
– “Once”, walking score for columbarium 2025-26 >>>
– Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm we participated with three walks offers. April 2025 >>>
– American Swedish Institute, MN, USA, Feb 2025 “Walking as Artform in Archipelago” >>>
– The Unfold – A Tread of Scores, started in 2025-26 a relay of walking scores by artist handed over to other artist to perform (video of performance) >>>
– Landscape You, 2025 April-May, London >>>
– “Sculpture You”, London, 2024
– “Walk With Us”, Pilgrim walk, St Olaf Waterway/Viking Trail, Väddö 2024
WAP WALKS BJÖRKÖ
The walks were publicly announced
“Walking With Locals” its an essay film by Gerhard of the various iterations of what at the end became a project based on personal stories and turned in to an audio tack with black and white photographs (essay film) >>>
“Fire Walk”, Björkö Locals and Lucid Dreams Artists/LA, Oct 2025
“Darkness Walk” WAP23-25 (canceled 25 due to very bad weather conditions), live torches walk to the quarry with campfire session (culture and eating) with WAP program
– “Light House Walk”, WAP25, July Community walk with WAP program
– Art Trail, QR based trail/exhibition during summer of 2025
Sunrise in Simpnäs, Björkö
REACH US
REACH US
WAPC artists are located in several places, on different continents, and we in urban, rurban and rural areas.
WAP is both a program where we every year do an open call for a walking art residency. Former participants who continue to engage as a fellow are referred to as.
WAPC/Walking As Practice Coalition, artists with an interest in traversing and transgressing through spaces and in this process rethinking and critiquing the social and ecological systems and structures we inhabit. WAPC engage walking as an art practice and as a methodology for critical creative inquiry. While in motion, each artist is examining ways to extend agency to others, place and the more-than human through acts of relational care and as a strategy for building togetherness. Starting in 2023 we are committed to do artist residencies focusing on walking this we call WAP Program.
WAPC have a deep interest in methodologies that support critical discourse around the structural constraints we as artists, activists, and diverse cultural and gendered bodies each face. By doing so, they present critiques of normative structures and propose to better distribute social agency, through acts of vulnerability and togetherness. WAPC have a deep interest in methodologies that support critical discourse around the structural constraints we as artists, activists, and diverse cultural and gendered bodies each face. By doing so, they present critiques of normative structures and propose to better distribute social agency, through acts of vulnerability and togetherness. The curatorial framework is designed to allow participating artists to influence its direction, leaning towards posthumanism and new materialism. This involves rethinking dualisms through a non-hierarchical approach. The first walkers met at Björkö (BKN) in The Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden.
WAP is affiliated with BKN and if in need of an official organization it is Ideella föreningen Björkö Konstnod.
WAPC approaches art+walking, mostly our point of departure is walking with proximity at times with humor, at times way more serious.
wapc @ walkingaspractice.org (remove blank spaces)
WAP – RESEACH CATALOGUE EXPOSITIONS
WAP ON RC
During 2023-25 each artist in WAP Program at Björkö made their own exposition on research catalogue. The link below takes you to the index page for the individual expositions.
Expositions by WAP artists 2023-25: Heather Kapplow, Aurike Quintelier, Juanma González, Benedicte Dahm, Dianne Reid, James Patrick Cunningham, Cecilia Hedlund, Bernardita Bennett, Marina Pugina, Cliff Andrade, Fernanda Branco, Anne Laure Vernet, Anna Mikuskova, Ami Skanberg, Gerhard Kowald, Alex Hawthorn, Jordan Rowe, Cecilia Lagerström, Nahelli Alejandra Chavoya Peña, Janice Jensen, Hayley Whelan, Antonia Aitken, Inga Manticas, Rebekah Dean, karin Brygger, Anna Viola Hallberg, Heather (HeyThere) Kapplow, Vincent Stangl, Freddie Maria Tetzlaff, Ming Ming, Shi Tou, Arba Bekteshi, Hazel Mei, Elisabeth, Billander, John Schuerman, Db Lampman, Annikki Wahlöö, Juarte Girdvainis, Tricia Enns, Toby Sheldon, Andrew Stuck, Anne Arndt.
WAP25 Waking As Passion – Embodied Thinking
WAP24 Spaces of Anticipation
WAP23 Attentative Walking
WAP Program
Expositions >>>
WAPC
Collective/Consortium/Coalition/Company
Since 2025 we are a node of WALC
wapc @ walkingaspractice.org
Course WALC >>>
