Public Art Walk

Profile

• Total Distance: 2 km
• Difficulty: Moderate
• Duration: 90 min (minimum of walking the score)
• Contemplation: ★★★★★
• Time Travel: ★★★★☆
• Solitude: ★★★★☆
• Sunset: ★★★★★

Location: 58°42’38.8″N 13°49’05.1″E
(PR69+864 Mariestad)
Area: Harbor, Mariestad, Sweden
Site: The Pier begins at Pirgatan/Pier Road

Walking art is a contemporary artistic practice where the act of walking is the central medium, experience, or outcome. Instead of producing traditional static objects like sculptures or paintings, artists use their bodies moving through a landscape to explore environments, engage in political activism, or create ephemeral mark-making and storytelling.

The title of this specific walking piece is simply called “Walk With Me”, it can be perceived as you walk with me or that you walk with history, or nature. Why not see the walk as a way of stepping in to your own past. Most important is that you keep reverence in mind.

A suggested way of walking by an artist is referred to as a walking score.

The walk to the end of the pier is approximately one kilometer each way. The first stretch is flat and welcoming, inviting an unhurried pace. It is an ideal place for a picnic, quiet conversation, or simply sitting by the fire pit as the wind carries the scent of the sea. The walk to the end of the pier is approximately one kilometer each way. The trail direction is a straight line South-North.

About half way you’ll pass the small abandoned lighthouse. Beyond it, the trail slips into dense vegetation and a more technical walk. The further out you get the trickier it is to find a good grip under your feet. (you do need good balance).

The final section demands your full attention. The trail narrows, the rocks become uneven, and at times the footing is uncertain. Good balance is essential, and trekking poles are recommended if you are less confident on rough terrain.

Before you lies the harbor entrance and the mouth of the Tidan River, where river water meets the open lake. A broad, flat rock comfortably seats up to three people. Facing directly west, it is a place made for sunsets, reflection, and silence.

The walk to the end of the pier is approximately one kilometer each way. The trail direction is more or less a straight line South to North.

The score focuses on embodied presence, attuned listening and reciprocal care. It shapes your perception to be vigilant.

Start walking in a slow pace and as you reach the end of the light posts.

/ Pause for a moment.

• What pace feels natural today – not for arriving, but for noticing?

Soon on your walk you’ll pass the small lighthouse, a silent guardian that has watched generations come and go. Beyond it, the trail slips into dense coastal vegetation, as though leaving the familiar world behind.

Keep left to discover a hidden path weaving through a canopy of trees. Before long, the landscape opens once again. In July, the grasses and wildflowers soften the shoreline until it resembles a natural meadow. Each opening feels like a clearing in both the landscape and the mind.

/ Notice the transition.

• If each section of the walk were a different chapter of your life, where are you now?

As you continue, the modern world gradually fades. The sounds of roads and buildings disappear, replaced by wind, birds, and waves. The old stone pier begins to feel less like a structure and more like a timeline stretching into the sea. Every step carries you farther from the present and deeper into another era, when this was a place of sailors, fishermen, merchants, and patient watchkeepers.

/ Imagine walking through time.

• Who walked these stones before you? What hopes, worries, or dreams might they have carried? Was the light house here? The pier? Cargoships?

The final section demands your full attention. The trail narrows, the rocks become uneven, and at times the footing is uncertain. Good balance is essential, and trekking poles are recommended if you are less confident on rough terrain. Perhaps this is no coincidence. The farther back we travel, the more carefully we must place each step.

Finally, you reach the pier head.

Before you lies the harbor entrance and the mouth of the Tidan River, where fresh water meets the open sea. Feel the water from the broad, flat rock comfortably seats up to three people. Facing directly west, it is a place made for sunsets, reflection, and silence.

/Sit for a while.

• What would you leave behind if the tide could carry it away? What would you bring back with you?

Here, time seems to dissolve. The horizon belongs equally to those who stood here centuries ago and those who will come long after us. The waves erase every footprint, yet the pier remains – a quiet reminder that every journey is both outward and inward. More than just a walk, this is an invitation to be fully present, immersed in quiet contemplation and the timeless beauty of the natural world. For a little while, the pier becomes a bridge between past and present, and every step is a gentle form of time travel. Remain seated as long as you feel comfortable, but try to ride out the itch of heading back.

This walk is part of a series expanding on experimental pilgrimage.

On your way back to the base of the pier, make it an act of listening. What sounds do you hear that are furtherst away? Which sounds are on your left and right at various stretches of the walk.

In intervall pay attention to various smells, the wind and perhaps touch the water with hands.

As you reach the light-posts, consider how you engaged with your senses you and mind during your walk and reflect over what personal memories you engaged with.

The art work consists of anyone walking the score.

Hallbergs moves between lens- and embodied practices. Working with social imagination and video installations . Walking is an integral part of Hallbergs practice as an artist and curator. Many projects visualize or enacts possible futures relating to care, proximity, and responsibility.  Hallberg prefers walks leading up to or along water. Liminal and attentive walking before distance. Walking becomes a means of understanding and interpreting the world, each other and ourselfs..

This pier walk the artist has undertaken since early childhood and is done year around up on visiting Mariestad. On July 5th 2026 the walk turned public and therefore this page was developed. It stems from the Conference “Rurban Talks: Infrastructure and Freedoms” held earlier during the summer in Mariestad. Where Hallberg did a keynote, a workshop and now also a conjuring walk.

2026 is the forth year Hallberg organizes walking residencies for international and national artists in the Stockholm Archipelago. In 2026 it has turned nomadic previously each artist had a studio on Björkö. WAP26 >>>

The themes:
WAP26 – Entanglement and Proximity (South-Mid archipelago)
WAP25 –Waking As Passion – Embodied Thinking (North archipelago)
WAP24 –Spaces of Anticipation (North archipelago)
WAP23 – Attentive Walking (North archipelago)

Contact: wapc @ walkingaspractice.org (remove gaps around @)