Strands of identity, places and people are woven together to make up the cultural landscape. These strands leave physical, cultural, individual, emotional, historical, ethnic, linguistic and social traces; traditions, places, memories and forgetting are the fabric of peoples' lives – collective memories woven into the landscape. Art and culture are expressions of people from and in places and traditions that transcend boundaries by being audible, visible, able to be perceived. Lost landscapes, places and traces are subsumed by new social, political, geographic situations but they remain and find new expression in new encounters. Echoes are a form of communication. Artists and researchers are invited to seek these echoes together, to discover and reflect on elements of culture and society, of progress and communities, creativity and separation. These refections give rise to new work, responses to the discovered traces, which generate their own resonances. The project intends, by inviting participants to engage more closely with the hidden layers of their surroundings, to catalyse a subtle movement against the contemporary dominance of individuality and materialism in society, encouraging a shift towards a climate of social tolerance and respect for people and landscapes.

ECHOES emanate from individual and collective histories of people and their natural or constructed surroundings. Landscapes stand for material and immaterial heritage, for culture as the basis of individual and group identity. ECHOES invites diverse artists and researchers (agents of cultural reflection), along with local populations and audiences, to hear, capture and work with echoes. Artists will use these to develop new works that, once made, become resonating objects or ideas, sending their own echoes to broader audiences beyond regional borders, catalysts for more new echoes. Art and culture are essential components of society that help to foster curiosity, imagination and mutual respect. The focus on echoes and landscapes invites local and international participants to rethink established social structures regarding human relationships to our surroundings.

ECHOES is a practical artistic approach to broadening awareness of culture in the region through artistic mobility, addressing new audiences and furthering research capacities in interactive projects that aim to act as a catalyst for further networks in other regions. THE ECHO COLLECTIVE is spread across decentralized urban and rural areas. We work across borders and are located in the periphery. In a geographic sense, we democratize the cultural process by mobilizing culture, shaping the art-world and applied research from outside major cities. We bring international artists to rural audiences, create platforms for cultural dialogue across physical and disciplinary borders, merging genres and practices from traditional and experimental art and performance to academic research and publishing, utilizing media and technology to broaden European cultural outreach.