Boucalais

Various Artists, ‘Boucalais’ (2004-2020), photo by Frederique de Montblanc — Various Artists, ‘Boucalais’ (2004-2022), photo by Frederique de Montblanc

**Boucalais** is a recurring, collaborative walking practice along the coast from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Calais—a region profoundly marked by the ongoing migrant crisis. For nearly two decades, Various Artists has traveled this trail not as a solitary author but as an instigator of collective encounters, using the walk to challenge rigid artistic production and engage directly with a charged landscape.

The work itself is a form of real-time, collaborative performance. It emerges from subtle roadside interventions, hotel-room rituals, and the collection of found objects—poetic traces left along the path. This methodology inherently critiques the solitary studio model, prioritizing instead lightweight, adaptive creations born from direct experience and the friction of the journey.

Participants in chronological order: Geska Helena Andersson, Frederique de Montblanc, Annemie Maes, Eveline Heylen, Melissa Bliss, Madaleine Trigg, Loes Jacobs, Pacome Beru, Tom Stone, Christophe Meierhans, David Helbich, Pascal Vandelanoitte, Sophie Muterer, Catherine Bompuis, Elke Van Campenhout, Bartaku, Dolores Hulan, Nicolas Matzner, Charlotte Dhont, Seba Hendrix, Rom Ferrand, Cyriel Engels, Adisak Jirassakassem, Shelbatra Jashari & Alin Gherman,

Being Boucalais

This collaborative ethos is central to **Being Boucalais**, an experiential tour for small groups of artists, curators, or writers. Here, the walk transforms into an exercise in shared observation and collective fiction-making. Guided by a mediator, participants are immersed in an environment where the scripted banalities of tourism blur with the stark reality of the borderlands. The project deliberately leverages the group dynamic: connecting with locals, appropriating non-art practices, and co-creating transient "roomworks" in hotel accommodations. The goal is to forge a shared, disorienting narrative that questions individual perception within a collectively experienced space.

Since 2013, themed iterations of *Being Boucalais* with guest artists have intensified this performative and collaborative focus. The walks consciously navigate the tension between the vacationist society and the marginalized transitory communities inhabiting the same terrain. By parodying tourists while moving through zones of humanitarian crisis, the work creates a potent, collaborative inquiry into visibility, hospitality, and the stories embedded in a contested landscape. The outcomes—performances, installations of dragged-back objects, documentation—are not final products but artifacts of a shared, migratory process, emphasizing that the true work is the collaborative act of witnessing and re-imagining this problematic region together.

Collections (1-50)

‘Boucalais Collections’ brought together the first 50 editions of Boucalais – walks from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Dunkerque following the coastline – that Various Artists initiated between 2004 and 2019. The exhibition displayed objects from this interconnected longterm research on mobile creation, beach combing, public performance, and the looping of time.

Draaiboek (roadmap):