Sideways – Walking Arts Festival

Sideways is a translocal, experimental festival for contemporary art and cultural
research, exploring different ‘pathscapes’ in the northern region of Belgium.
This first-time event did unfold on the go across a four week period in the summer
of 2012. It exhibited a broad program of visual art, walks, live art and sitespecific
interventions. Ubiquitous yet overlooked, these pathscapes comprise a
broad diversity of ‘spaces of going’: crooked rural footpaths; cycleways spanning
many kilometres; straight tow paths on the banks of waterways; transient ‘desire
lines’ leading from one urban area to another; barely perceptible, overgrown
backroads; picturesque hollow ways; etc.
The festival aims to question the past history, present use and future potential
of these landscape features, as well as our conceptions of time, space, movement
and memory and create a collaborative meeting ground.
The festival was structured in 1. a journey 2. festival nodes and 3. concluding
conference.