WALKING – Thinking in Motion.

Symposium and Walkshops

A transdisciplinary conference on walking as an artistic practice, a spatial experience, and a knowledge-generating method in the spirit of Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt.

🗓 ZURICH: June 5 to 7, 2026                               
📍 Labör at MFO-Areal, Oerlikon, Zürich

🗓 BASEL: September 11 to 13, 2026  
📍 Holzpark, Klybeck, Basel

WALKING continues in 2026. Following the successful first edition in 2025, two further editions will take place, each featuring a symposium and walkshops. Each gathering has its own distinct program and setting, and they can be attended independently. Drawing on the concept of promenadology, the science of walking developed by Lucius and Annemarie Burckhardt, we invite artists, researchers, and walkers to explore walking as a critical, spatial, and artistic practice.

🎤🥾 Speakers and Walkshops

Zurich
> Program > Reader (Bios & Abstracts) > Photo Documentation (Walkshops) > Videos (Talks)

Basel
The final program will be published at the end of July.
Confirmed speakers and walkshops for the Basel edition (as of May 25, 2026):

Tom Brunner & Katja Reichenstein
Violeta Burckhardt
Clementine Butler-Gallie & Clare Qualmann
Babak Fakhamzadeh
Carolin Genz & Henriette Lutz
Johannes M. Hedinger
Deirdre Heddon
Martin Josephy
Marie-Anne Lerjen
Ann Mbuti
Ailin Nolmans
Niklaus Reichle & Ueli Vogt
Markus Ritter
Alona Rodeh
Morag Rose
Núria Rovira & Mel Galley
Julia Rüegger & Patrick Düblin
Soya the Cow
Aylin Tschoepe & Denise Haschke
Unofficial Walking Society AG
Judith Weidmann & Frederic Bron
Léonard Wiesendanger

Participation
👥 There are a few spots left for Basel. Participation is limited to 30 people.
✍️ Interested applicants should apply with a short letter of motivation and CV. Participation is free of charge. An administrative fee of CHF 80 applies, for which food and drink vouchers will be provided.
📌 Registration for Basel by Aug 1, 2026                 > Participation Form EN

Participants must arrange their own travel, accommodations, and meals. A meal option will be available at the conference venue, and snacks will be provided free of charge. Participants may also make a voluntary contribution.

Streaming / Documentation
Some of the talks will also be offered in hybrid format, though the workshops and walkshops will not.
The streaming link will be posted here on the conference dates.
A selection of contributions from all three conferences will later be included in the publication «WALKING», to be published in the ILEA Books series by ILEA Press with Vexer Verlag in early 2027.

Organization
Organization: ILEA Institute for Land and Environmental Art.
Curatorial team: Violeta Burckhardt and Johannes M. Hedinger
Cooperationen: Labör, Holzpark, Lokal für Raumbegehung, ETH (D-ARCH), DSI Community Gaming, Swiss Game Hub,  ZHdK, Hafechäs, Gannet u.a.
Support: Pro Helvetia, Stiftung Lucius und Annemarie Burckhardt u.a.

ILEA – Institute for Land and Environmental Art, www.ilea.art
studio erde, https://www.studio-erde.com/
Lucius und Annemarie Burckhardt Stiftung, www.lucius-burckhardt.org

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Concept (longer text)

2025 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lucius Burckhardt, the founder of promenadology, the science of walking. Yet the occasion is far more than a historical commemoration. In a present shaped by ecological crisis, pressure from urbanization, and the digital overcoding of space, his thinking gains new urgency. Burckhardt’s approach, which takes walking seriously as an epistemic practice, can now be read as an invitation to a critical perception of the world. WALKING becomes a method for questioning those forms of design that appear “natural,” and a practice through which relations among space, body, and power become visible.

For Burckhardt, the walk was never an end in itself, but a means of questioning ways of seeing. We do not see the landscape, he argued, but our own expectations. In a world shaped by accelerated planning processes, algorithmic navigation, and global acceleration, promenadology offers a slowing counter-movement: thinking in motion, a pause brought about through walking.

Current positions in art, philosophy, and the social sciences take up this impulse and carry it further. Tim Ingold speaks of “slow observation” as an ecological method. In walking art, artists such as Blake Morris, Cristina Maldonado, and Janet Cardiff explore walking as a performative act that produces space. Rebecca Solnit describes walking as a deeply cognitive practice: “The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape stimulates a sequence of thoughts.” Walking thus produces not only movement in space, but movements of thought. At the same time, voices such as Sara Ahmed and Anna Tsing remind us that paths are not equally open to everyone: space is never neutral, and walking is never universal.

Burckhardt’s relevance today lies less in his specific answers than in his method of doubt: the invitation to understand perception as a force that can be shaped and that shapes in turn. Anyone who takes this attitude seriously recognizes that WALKING is not an escape from the world, but a way of understanding it, changing it, and imagining it anew.

But what does this mean today, when walking is monitored, channeled, and measured? How can Burckhardt’s ideas be translated into a time in which walking is at once a form of protest, a practice of self-care, a mode of mobility, and an artistic medium? Perhaps the real question is no longer, “Why is landscape beautiful?” but rather: how can we learn to perceive anew in a fragmented world, through movement, through attention, through the resistance of walking?

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Thematic fields – (brief description)

1. Walking as artistic, research-based, and social practice
   Walking as an artistic, epistemic, and participatory method: walks as performances, lecture walks, walkshops, storytelling, trail reading, writing while walking, and walking as social choreography. Walking becomes a creative and community-building practice that enables new insights and experiences.
2. Walking as ecological practice and encounter with landscape
   How does walking change our relationship with the environment? Walking is understood as a means of ecological perception, of encountering landscapes, and of sustainable mobility. It includes tracking, encountering non-human actors (animals, rivers, territories), and walking as climate and environmental practice.
3. Walking, memory, and historical spaces
   Walks as forms of active remembrance, historical experience, and trace-seeking. Walking becomes a method of memory culture, biographical and collective storytelling, and engagement with local and global histories.
4. Walking as political, caring, and resistant practice
   Walking as protest, care practice, and everyday resistance. Focused on issues of displacement, the right to move, the crossing of borders (geographical, political, social), and walking as a solidaric, politically motivated action.
5. Perception, space, and power – feminist, decolonial, and inclusive perspectives
   Who is allowed to walk where, when, and how? Walking is never neutral. This field examines power relations in space, feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives, and issues of accessibility, embodiment, health, and inclusion. It addresses walking rights, visibility, and barriers in public space.
6. Digital mobility and the future of walking
   How do digital technologies shape our walking? This field addresses walking in data-driven cities, smart walking, gamification (e.g., geocaching, walking games), tracking, digital navigation, and surveillance. Walking is explored as a hybrid phenomenon between physical movement and digital control.
7. Promenadology/ Strollology today – learning perception anew
   Lucius Burckhardt’s science of strolling as a contemporary and future-relevant school of perception: how can promenadology be rethought and applied in times of smart cities, climate crisis, and AI? This field invites critical expansion, practical exploration, and theoretical reinterpretation of the science of walking.

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Target Groups
Who might benefit from (re)discovering Burckhardt?

• For artists in visual art, performance, theater, and related fields who work with space, the body, and perception
• For urban planners and designers who take questions of space and user perception seriously
• For researchers in cultural studies, social sciences, and environmental studies who practice walking as a method, including in anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and related fields
• For activists who defend public space as political space
• For teachers and learners seeking new forms of learning and thinking, outdoors, in motion, and through inquiry
• Interested members of the public
  Experience walking as a new form of reflection, perception, and participation.

Reading Burckhardt—or rather: walking with him—means embracing an attitude that is radically open, observant, and not-knowing. It is a counter-model to a hectic expert culture. And it holds a promise: that attentive walking can make another world visible.