2008

Coordinator: Yannis Ziogas

Organizing Committee: Aggeliki Avgitidou

Filippos Kalamaras

Fotini Kariotaki

Sophia Kiriakou

Educational Program: Maria Aggeli

Hiking Guide: Theodoris Fatsis

The Visual March to Prespes 2008 was realized from 28^th to 30^th June. The aim of Visual March to Prespes 2008 was to enrich the process with last year's experience. The aim of 2008 was to initiate by the end of the process specific proposals that could be realized over the years to come.

There were two main axes of the process:

1.    The Conference of the Mountain that was realized in the beginning of the period and when the participants developed thoughts about the way they interpret the experience of the Prespes area.

2.    The Conference of the Mountain that was realized in the conclusion of the process and when there were developed concrete proposals that would allow the transformation of Visual March to Prespes in an event repeated on an annual basis

The conclusions of the two conferences illustrated with photos from the process were published in a booklet issued from the University of Western Macedonia.

The process of Visual March to Prespes is initiated from the rationale the artist and the thinker in general is not only an object constructor or someone who composes texts. On the contrary his/her work is characterized from the use of critical thinking and the relation of artistic practice to society. The above is characterized from the international terminology as "critical practice".

Critical practice is one of the research approaches the concern artistic practice, and is the most relevant to Visual March to Prespes. This type of research emerged as a means of both developing new innovative ways of working and as a means of negotiating new relationships with audience through project based initiatives, both within and outside conventions of exhibiting. The motive underpinning these types of project, as most theorists address, is to challenge the profession to adopt fresh approaches to creativity, which is critical and experimental in nature. In such way, critical issues are identified, framed and modeled within projects through a self conscious and negotiated process. Critical practice mirrors personal research in as far as it contributes to the subject of art practice through the activities of individual practitioners, who are engaged with that subject matter in discrete projects, and mirrors formal research in locating the research activity within a clearly articulated critical and contextual framework[1].

The total number of the participants (instructors, students, visitors) was 25.

[1] This paragraph was written by Penelope Petsini