The Art-Hiking festival connects art, movement, and landscape into an open process of walking, seeing, and participating. The project begins in a vacant house in the center of Mühlacker – a place that serves simultaneously as origin, workshop, and archive. Between faded wallpaper and open structure, a space emerges where past and present intertwine. From here, artists and visitors set out each day on walks leading to the surrounding villages: Lienzingen, Dürrmenz, Enzberg, Großglattbach, and Lomersheim. The project is envisioned as the starting point for an annual art festival in Mühlacker, which will activate vacant spaces for art and organize art-hikes into the neighboring districts.

Each route opens up a different terrain, a different history, a different perspective. The hikes lead through vineyards, along the Enz River, through forests, and over ridges that connect the town with its villages. Along the way, participants encounter site-specific works, performances, and temporary installations responding to the particular qualities of the landscape. International and local artists shape these artistic stations – in resonance with nature, architecture, and history. Thus, the path itself becomes a gallery, and walking turns into a curatorial principle.
Art-Hiking / Kunstwandern is a collaboration between Cheapart and APART (Athens, Greece), Kunst im Keller (Vienna, Austria), and the Volkswanderverein Senderstadt Mühlacker. It brings together diverse cultural and geographical perspectives – urban and rural, Mediterranean and South German, professional artistic practice and lived hiking tradition. This intersection of international contemporary art and local movement culture opens new forms of encounter between places and people.

The public is warmly invited to take part – as spectators, fellow hikers, conversation partners, or simply as curious companions. Whoever joins becomes part of the project: every hike is open, every performance invites closeness, every encounter shifts the perception of space. Art no longer appears at a distance but unfolds through shared steps, exchanges along the path, and attention to the surroundings.

Meanwhile, the central house in Mühlacker remains a place of return – a quiet anchor within the movement. Each evening it welcomes back the participants, becoming a site of collection and transformation. Impressions, found objects, sounds, and notes converge here, growing into a constantly changing exhibition. The rooms reflect what happens outside – condensing the experience of walking into a collective narrative.
Art-Hiking / Kunstwandern is not a fixed exhibition format but a process unfolding across days and routes. The landscape becomes the studio, walking becomes an artistic method, and being on the way together becomes performance. Between house and horizon, a space of openness emerges where art, nature, and community merge.

Thus, Mühlacker and its villages become a living network of paths, voices, and images – a place where art is not simply displayed but walked and experienced.