STATEMENT / PRESS RELEASE
Walking artist and photographer Dario J. Laganà places the body at the center of the action, using endurance to humanize the relationship with nature and building a narrative that connects lived experience with observation.
The interplay of time, body, route and landscape in a juxtaposition of solitude, endurance and encounters in which environmental forces and logistical constraints actively influence perception and decision-making.
Beginning in Reykjavik, Laganà will participate in the Reykjavik Art Festival Hub, (4th June 15:00 - 19.30 at the Iðnó terrace) with a performance and after engaging in an artistic discussion with curator Annabelle von Girsewald, who is facilitating connections within local artistic communities. Through the end of August, he will walk counterclockwise around the island, gathering photographic material, moving images, sound recordings, and interviews with local figures in art, environmentalism, and hospitality. These encounters blend solitary walking with dialogue, creating a shared investigation of nomadic practices and site-specific understanding.
Central to this nomadic mobility is a custom-built, solar-powered trolley, equipped with a rechargeable battery system and an electric friction drive; it allows for long time off-grid autonomy and it transforms the technical necessity of hauling gear into a deliberate, dialogue with the terrain, without renouncing to technology, enabling a continuous presence in remote landscapes.
The project’s development will be accessible through (this) dedicated website ofwalkingonfoot.com. This platform acts as a field diary, combining objective data with personal observations to document the journey in real time and prepare the base for a future exhibition.
By grounding ecological questions in embodied experience, the project seeks to make environmental issues tangible at a human scale, emphasizing effort and fragility over narratives of deprivation. Inspired also by the personal resonance of Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, Laganà aims to move beyond abstract data, creating stories that make the climate crisis personal, tangible, and deeply human.
Dario J. Laganà is a photographer and walking‑based artist based in Berlin. His practice explores endurance, solitude, and ecological awareness through self‑supported, long distance journeys. Using walking as both method and medium, he places the body in direct exposure to landscape and environmental conditions.
His ongoing project Of Walking on Foot, a long-term artistic research project through walking, includes Wilderness Australis (a series of walks in Australian rainforest), a 600 km traversal of the Shetland Islands, and 1,000 km crossing of Norway, which became the short movie Like a fern between rocks (selected in 3 film festivals in 2025).
Generating visual, sonic, and textual materials to be developed into future exhibitions, publications, and audiovisual works, his practice investigates thresholds between solitude and isolation.
Walking artist and photographer Dario J. Laganà places the body at the center of the action, using endurance to humanize the relationship with nature and building a narrative that connects lived experience with observation.
The interplay of time, body, route and landscape in a juxtaposition of solitude, endurance and encounters in which environmental forces and logistical constraints actively influence perception and decision-making.
Beginning in Reykjavik, Laganà will participate in the Reykjavik Art Festival Hub, (4th June 15:00 - 19.30 at the Iðnó terrace) with a performance and after engaging in an artistic discussion with curator Annabelle von Girsewald, who is facilitating connections within local artistic communities. Through the end of August, he will walk counterclockwise around the island, gathering photographic material, moving images, sound recordings, and interviews with local figures in art, environmentalism, and hospitality. These encounters blend solitary walking with dialogue, creating a shared investigation of nomadic practices and site-specific understanding.
Central to this nomadic mobility is a custom-built, solar-powered trolley, equipped with a rechargeable battery system and an electric friction drive; it allows for long time off-grid autonomy and it transforms the technical necessity of hauling gear into a deliberate, dialogue with the terrain, without renouncing to technology, enabling a continuous presence in remote landscapes.
The project’s development will be accessible through (this) dedicated website ofwalkingonfoot.com. This platform acts as a field diary, combining objective data with personal observations to document the journey in real time and prepare the base for a future exhibition.
By grounding ecological questions in embodied experience, the project seeks to make environmental issues tangible at a human scale, emphasizing effort and fragility over narratives of deprivation. Inspired also by the personal resonance of Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, Laganà aims to move beyond abstract data, creating stories that make the climate crisis personal, tangible, and deeply human.
Dario J. Laganà is a photographer and walking‑based artist based in Berlin. His practice explores endurance, solitude, and ecological awareness through self‑supported, long distance journeys. Using walking as both method and medium, he places the body in direct exposure to landscape and environmental conditions.
His ongoing project Of Walking on Foot, a long-term artistic research project through walking, includes Wilderness Australis (a series of walks in Australian rainforest), a 600 km traversal of the Shetland Islands, and 1,000 km crossing of Norway, which became the short movie Like a fern between rocks (selected in 3 film festivals in 2025).
Generating visual, sonic, and textual materials to be developed into future exhibitions, publications, and audiovisual works, his practice investigates thresholds between solitude and isolation.
My practice is rooted in walking as an artistic method where body, route, and landscape are inseparable. In 2026, I will enter its most intensive phase: a sustained act of walking that I will prepare through months of artistic development. This will take the form of around 3,000 km nomadic journey around Iceland, entirely on foot with a custom-built, solar-powered trolley. Along the way, I will gather photographs, videos, sound recordings, archival pictures of objects, audio and written observations, building a comprehensive artistic archive.
Earlier in my career, beginning with a walk on the Orkney Islands 20 years ago, travel served as an unspoken backdrop. I moved through landscapes and societies to take photographs, with the journey's choices, constraints, and demands remaining invisible. In recent years, also with the development of the trolley, my practice has shifted toward a form of field-based research where the act of walking, the encounters along the way, and the states of mind they generate become integral to the work.
This approach is "in itinere", developed during walks of increasing duration: 360 km in the Australian rainforest, 560 km across the Shetland Islands, and 1,000 km through Norway, resulting in the short film Like a fern between rocks, selected for the Frome International Climate Film Festival, Beyond Cars Festival and Premio Corto Montagna in 2025 as time-based visual art.
I took a pause in 2025 to reflect on the deeper frameworks of my practice, engaging with Rebecca Solnit's critiques of heroic narratives in Wanderlust and her vision of walking as "a mode of making the world as well as being in it". This period also allowed me to explore more fully Frédéric Gros' assertion that walking "suspends time, interrupts work, and breaks with everyday routines" (A Philosophy of Walking). Stepping back from the field renewed both my mind and spirit, and I now return with a sharper sense of purpose.
This methodology draws from performance art, site-specific installation, and environmental art, echoing the lineage of artists like Hamish Fulton and also integrating it with Iceland's related environmentalist writers like Andri Snær Magnason, but extending it with a multi-sensory, logbook-building form.
In my walking practice, I see technology as a quiet ally rather than an intrusion. I work with whatever tools I can build or adapt, from solar power systems to modular engineering, to help me endure the physical demands of long and remote journeys. For the Iceland walk, I will adapt the trolley I designed to carry my equipment with an engine (allowing me to walk hands free), to be used as a shelter and further ideas are scheduled. Even though Hamish Fulton's walks in Iceland remain an important reference for me, especially his focus on the walk as the work, my approach places technology within that frame, using renewable energy and DIY solutions to help me focus more on other topics. In this way the trolley becomes both a survival tool and a companion, bridging the endurance and meditative qualities of walking with the possibilities of contemporary tools and ecological awareness.
The gradual shift toward Arctic environments emerged both from practical necessity, as walking proves easier in colder climates, and personal history: growing up in Naples under Mount Vesuvius' shadow, I've always questioned how other communities coexist with geological forces. This walk will also align with the rare total solar eclipse of summer 2026, a singular moment to experience and document in solitude, to be included in my future works.
As I prepare, I hold these questions for seeing, keeping me awake to what the walk might offer: How will months of walking fracture and reshape time? Is exhaustion a path to discovery or just a romanticized struggle? What remains when everything nonessential falls away? These are not problems to solve but ways of looking that keep the work alive.
Beyond financing, institutional support represents vital recognition, enabling this demanding journey as an open field of artistic inquiry. With such support, I will develop a significant new body of work through months of endurance walking through Iceland's shifting landscapes, laying the foundation for future artistic projects that may include presentations, installations, or other forms of sharing.
The project is supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Unionin collaboration with the Goethe Institut.
