ON Residencies

An on-going research on Artists-in-Residencies' models and experiences

[onresidencies]

Artists residencies: which kind of institutions are they? A conversation with Laura Windagher. (part 2/2)

Angela Serino (AS): Residency programs are mostly described as spaces for freedom and experimentation, where there is an emphasis to support open and research-based processes that do not necessarily need to materialize into new finished works or projects. However, as you have noticed, this freedom and openness can also be 'limited' and 'deceptive'. 

According to you what are the consequences of such relation between conceiving a residency as place for an open research and at the same time expecting that this process is somehow made public during its development?

Laura Windhager (LW): I believe that it is important to think about more sustainable programmes, to enable programmes, that are geared towards an ongoing dialogue and long-term cooperations, rather than reiterating  precarious and project based working models. The potentiality of residency programmes lies in its ability to function as a missing link between art school and a more established career. With what I have described above as a post-institution, it also offers a platform to un-think the structures and mechanisms of the institutions that we have unconsciously internalised in so far. Long term production and cooperation entails a form of radical hospitality that foster social values like friendship, responsibility and wellbeing, a space for repose and regeneration.  

“The promotion and adaption of wireless technologies, and their annihilation of the singularity of place and event, is simply an after-effect of new institutional requirements. In its despoliation of the rich textures and indeterminations of human time, 24/7 simultaneously incites and unsustainable and self-liquidating identification with its fantasmatic requirements; it solicits an open-ended but always unfinished investment in the many products for faciliating this identification. (…) In spite of the omnipresent proclamations of the compatibility, even harmonization, between human time and the temporalities of networked systems, the lived lives of this relationship are disjunctions, fractures, and continual disequilibrium.” (p. 31) When Jonathan Cracy talks about this hallucination of a permanent presence, it becomes understandable how a residency could undermine this constant drive for availablity, productivity, consumerability. Exploring social structures that are rather built on trust and friendship rather than the mimesis of precarious working conditions, the offer a space of privacy, that can is needed for the nurturing of a subjectivity. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt elaborates a distinction between the exhausting resulting from labor, and the regeneration that occurs within the shielded domesticity.

AS: Which sort of 'Production' is in a residency? 

Already in 2006, Hito Steyerl and Boris Buden described the work produced in a residency as   very close to the contemporary conditions of the immaterial workers. They wrote: "The 'product' which is expected is performative, not object-based: it implies the creation of relations, of communication, of networks. Thus 'residency work' belongs to a type of affective and symbolic labour, which is becoming increasingly important today. It consists of meetings, greetings, small talk, exchange of e-mail addresses, networking, in short it is in a sense political work already without any other consequences then replicating itself. The relational 'product' is the creation of a networked space, which sustains, changes and enlarges itself gradually. It is created by a sort of labour, which is no longer separated from an autonomous sphere of politics but has pervaded it." ["The Artist as Res(den)t", Etcetera 104 (December 2006), Belgium]

In such situation, resident artists live in a condition of temporal and spatial fragmentation and extended temporariness that - according to Steyerl and Buden - weaken the impact of their work and their role in society. 

After some years since their analysis what do you think is the current development of the residency programs? Do you see more awareness among artists, residencies operators, and art professionals of such risks?

LW: Buden and Steyerl critique is partly aimed at what I would advocate, in a more radical way. Instead of focusing on the actual materialisation of artistic labour, I believe that the potential of residencies lies in its ability to host, to nurture, to envision a social institution outside of a consumerist logic. When I look at spaces like Kunsthius SYB or Les laboratoires d’AUbervilliers, the focus there has already shifted to more sustainable practices, practices that embrace the communities they are embedded in and that are geared towards sustainability and ephemerality at the same time. If, as I have stated before, one characteristic of residencies is that they are rooted in an inexorable present, one way to alter residencies might be to stress their volatile character. In an age where the idea of constant labor, of working without a pause, of fluid economic cycles without disruptions, non-working is un uncompromised interuption of this need and urge to be productive. The fact that nothing is being produced - at least nothing that can be bought and sold - might be its most radical perspective.

Are there ways and new/other approaches to residency programmes that intentionally avoid these risks? or where the temporariness of such programs bring also positive effects both for the artists and for the hosting community?

I think BAU could be such a format. BAU was founded by Lisa Mazza, Simone Mair and Filipa Ramos, with the intention of establishing a biannual programme of residencies with invited artists, curators, researches and other cultural producers.

They challenge the classical model of a residency through different formats such as field trips, screenings, walks, eating together, working together, and creating dialogues with diverse and transversal audiences.

BAU stresses the “encounter as a privileged form of exchange, in which coexistence and cooperation are central factors for the definition of a common space”, without neglecting the communities and localities they are embedded in.

I like the idea that their name is derived from Bauhaus, with its focus on building, the aspect of living and working together, the state of permanent construction, that is not bound to a physical space but rather travels with the subjectivities that create these intimate encounters.

Laura Windhager is a theorist and art historian based in Vienna. She has previously worked at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and as a research assistant for Contemporary and Modern Art art the University of Vienna. She was a 2012 grant holder for the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz Austria and is currently working on her PhD thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Read the first part of the interview here.

Images’ credit: Nada Art Colony

[onresidencies]

Artists residencies: which kind of institutions are they? A conversation with Laura Windagher. (part 1/2)

What kind of Institution is an artist-in-residency? Why does it have an ambiguous and hybrid status? How can we rethink the artistic production taking place in such programs today? I talked of these and other questions with Vienna-based art historian and theorist Laura Windhager. Read our conversation here.

Angela Serino (AS) : You have talked of residencies as 'post-institutions', which main focus is only on the time of the present and historicity is splintered up. 

Could you elaborate more about this definition?  

Laura Windhager (LW): To get an understanding or approximation of what residencies are, it is helpful to develop an apprehension of their relationship towards the process of institutionalisation and the ambivalent and unstable relationship towards institutions. This approach seems to be especially relevant to conceptualise them, given the residencies’ precarious existence and their obscure relationship towards production and the visibility of production. Using the word 'institution', following Pascal Gielen’s understanding as being a space where hegemonic discourses are being produced, reproduced, altered and discarded, to describe or talk about residencies becomes perhaps a little ambiguous. By now, residency programmes are definitely an integral part of the art world at large, they have become integral for artists, curators and theorists to have at least one in their curriculum vitae. Yet, they are not exhibition spaces per definition. Residencies are sites or spaces of production, they are process oriented, open ended, they require no final product – at least in most programmes. But this openness and freedom for creativity and production is also limited and deceptive: whilst no actual artwork or finished text might be expected, it is common practice that the residents give public talks, have an open studio day or even finish with a solo or group exhibition. Residencies may not be public spaces by definition, in the sense that museums are, nonetheless they have a certain degree of visibility: they have their open studio days or even an exposé of artistic practices in an exhibition format. Yet if one approaches them functionally, they are sites of production rather than exhibition spaces. They are a post-institution in so far, as there is a collapse of art production and art presentation.

AS: According to you what are the consequences of such relation between conceiving a residency as place for an open research and at the same time expecting that this process is somehow made public during its development?

LW: Residencies offer a space where life and work collide. They are sites of production and sites for temporary inhabitation. They allow for the production of art, theory, ideas and concepts. But they also function as exhibition sites with a certain degree of public visibility. Most residency programmes are neither a private and secluded retreat, nor are they a constantly and publicly accessible exhibition site, but a compound. Even though these residencies are defined as sites of production and spaces for artistic freedom, they all have a certain institutionalised exhibition format nevertheless, be it as open studio days or a final curated exhibition. As radical as the residencies position themselves, the moment of exhibition always harbours a danger of relapsing into the ossifying moment of institutionalisation. The artists and theorists within the residency programme cannot choose between privacy and publicness, the opening of their studio is not their decision but mostly the institution’s. Despite the fact that the main focus of these presentations and institutional representations is not geared towards the exhibition of finished objects, the stress is rather on the open-endedness and processuality of artistic practices, residencies exemplify a certain post-studio problematic in so far as they embody the movement or shift from exhibiting the finished art object or commodity to exhibiting the actual artistic process. By exhibiting and making the process of artistic production publicly accessible, the attention and interest has shifted from the self-contained artwork to the process of production, so that the site of production becomes a kind of “shop window” of artistic labour, which functions as an exhibition programme.

But by making a more or less invisible process the object of reception, this links residencies to the practices of immaterial labour and the post-Fordist working conditions with their flexible working hours, immaterial labour, the dissolution of routinisation, and the drill to excessive individualisation. 

AS: How this affect the work of the resident artists, and of the residency curators and directors according to your experience, and what you have researched so far?

LW: I am not sure if I can answer this question in general. Most of my research has its origin in a collaborative research project with Lisa Mazza. We had a look into different categories of residencies, from ephemeral residencies such as the Caribic residency, as well as very institutionalised sormats like Delphina foundation or Gasworks in London. So I don’t think it would be possible to deduct a general effect, as the artists vary as much as the residency programmes. If you apply, say, for Kunsthuis SYB or Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck, your artistic practice and/or research focus is most likely different to an artist who applies to “factory residencies” like Gasworks or Solitude. 

Pictures credits: Nada Art Colony

Read Part 2 of the Interview here.

[onresidencies]

A conversation with Irmeli Kokko (Helsinki) - curator, educator, and cultural producer with a long time involvement in residency programs

Irmeli Kokko has 
been 
working 
with
 artist
 residencies 
since 
mid
 90's. She was the founder and first director of the finnish residency program HIAP in Helsinki, and board member of the global network of artists' residencies Res Artis 1999-2001. As the member of the Nordic expert-group by the Nordic Council of Ministers' Cultural Programme 2007-2011 she developed the new residency programme for the Nordic and Baltic countries. Kokko currently works as lecturer at the University of Arts/Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

(from left) Johan Pousette and Irmeli Kokko (Res Artis General Meeting, 2008)

Angela Serino (A.S.): I first met you in Amsterdam 

during 
Res Artis’
11th 
General 
Meeting in 2008. On that occasion, you
 talked together 
with 
Johan 
Poussette
 of 
production‐in‐residence, a
residency 
model
 recently 
introduced
 at 
that 
time
 in
the 
Nordic 
area. 
Can 
you 
tell
me
 something
 more 
about 
this 
model 
and
 the 
ideas 
underpinning
 it?

Irmeli Kokko (I.K.): The 
idea 
of 
AIP
(Artist‐in‐Production)
 was 
to 
create
 a 
funding 
model 
that 
would
 allow
 artists 
to 
produce
 new
 artworks.
 In 
defining
 contemporary 
production
 in 
residencies,
 the 
starting
 point 
was 
the 
practitioners’ 
perspective 
– 
the 
art professionals,
 residency organisations
 and
artists, 
whom 
we 
asked 
to 
define
 their
 idea 
of
 production.
 Residencies 
do 
differ
– 
or 
at
 least
 they 
should
 differ 
– 
from
 other
 art
 institutions
 and 
galleries. 
We
wanted
 to 
make
 a
 difference 
between
 commissioned
 artworks 
and
 the
production 
environment 
that 
residencies
 could
 provide.

This 
is 
what 
we 
thought:
 “The
 concept
 of 
production”
 can 
be 
substituted 
with
the
 concept
 of 
”project”,
 which 
describes
 ”production”
 as 
a 
more 
open‐ended
process
 – rather than
 the 
word
 ”product”, 
which 
has 
in
 it 
a 
certain 
tone
 of 
an
expected 
result.
 The
 reference 
could
 be
 the 
French
 word
 “projeté” 
(Jean‐Baptiste
Joly),
 which 
means
 throwing 
a 
projection
 in 
front.
 The
 group wanted
 to
emphasise 
the 
meaning
 of
 “open‐ended”
 processes
 in 
connection 
with
residencies [note 1].
 Also, 
the 
discussed
 metaphoric 
words 
of 
”raw, 
cooked
 and
packed” 
were 
seen
 to 
illustrate
 the
 production 
process,
 with
 different
 phases
consisting
 of 
research,
 production 
and
 distribution.
 The 
production
 in 
residencies 
should
 concentrate 
on 
the 
first 
two
 phases
 – raw
 and 
cooking
equates
 to research
 and 
production.
 The 
production
 process 
in 
residencies
should
 include
 time 
for 
pre‐research
 and
 creation 
with
 risk,
 which 
means 
the
right 
to
 fail 
or 
to 
change 
plans
 during 
the
 residency 
process.
 Production
residencies
 should
 carry 
out
 such 
projects,
 which 
cannot 
be 
realised
 inside
 the
institutional 
framework
 like 
museums.

The 
AIP 
model 
would 
be 
important 
because 
most 
of 
institutions,
 like 
museums
and
 galleries, 
show
 artworks 
that 
already 
exist. 
On 
the 
contrary,
 there 
are 
not 
that 
many
 structures
 that would
 support 
the 
start 
of 
the 
artistic 
process, 
both
financially 
and
 with 
planning.

[note 1: Here
 I.Kokko 
refers
 to
 the 
expert group
 of 
Nordic 
Cultural 
Program/
Module 
to 
support 
Residencies
 by 
Nordic 
Council 
of 
Ministers (2007‐2011).
Members
 of
 the 
group
 were:
 Irmeli
Kokko,
 Ragnhejdur
 Tryggvadottir, Johan
Pousette
 and 
Kaarel
Oja.]

gardening at Mustarinda’s Residency (Finland)

A.S.: 
Sharat 
Maharaj
 defines
 production 
as 
art’s
 specific 
capacity
 of
 ‘spawning’
new
 things, 
as 
opposed
 to
 simply 
repeating
 them.
 (“The 
usage
 of
 the 
term
production
 is 
to 
help 
distinguish
 it 
sharply
 from
 the 
domain
 of 
‘knowledge
transfer’.
.. Production
 centres 
on 
a 
transformative 
cross over
 that 
throws 
up 
a
surplus. 
In 
this
 sense
 it
 harbours
 the 
possibility 
of 
spawning
 something
 ‘other’
than
 what 
already
 exists. 
‘Transfer’ 
is 
concerned
 with 
mastering 
and
 mining 
an
already
 identified
 field 
with 
fixed 
procedures 
and 
protocol.”S.M.) 

Do 
you
 recognise
 the 
existence
 of
 such
 a
 tension
 (between
 working
 towards
 an
unpredictable 
outcome
 and 
following
 known
 paths)
 and
 the
 risks 
of
 'systematisation' 
also 
in 
the 
field 
of 
residencies?
 

I.K.:
 I 
presume
 that 
residencies 
as 
a 
very
 flexible
 model 
of 
contemporary
 cultural
 production 
are 
under
 the 
risk 
of 
‘systematisation’, as
 all 
art structures
are
 during 
the
 cultural
 globalisation 
process.
 At
 the 
same
 time, 
residencies 
are
offering
 a
 clear
 alternative: 
space
 and 
time
 in 
specific 
localities,
 for
 thinking,
experimentation 
and
 production 
based 
on 
artistic 
freedom.
The 
field
 of
residencies
 is 
still 
a 
field
 of
 pluralism
 and
 diversity. 
What 
I 
want 
to
 say 
is 
that 
the 
tension
 is 
two‐fold 
at 
the 
same
 time.
 This 
tension 
also 
leads 
to 
new
 forms
 of
production
 structures.


A.S.: Can 
we
 speak
 today
 of
 an
 'institutionalisation'
 of
 residencies?
 And
 if 
so, 
do
 you 
see 
interesting 
directions
 in
 this 
development?


I.K.: The 
institutionalisation
 process 
of 
residencies 
started
 at the 
end
 of
 the 
1990s
 through
 the 
development
and
 the 
expansion
 of 
different 
mobility 
programs
 by
 national
 governments,
 local
 authorities 
and 
foundations,
 as
 well 
as
supra‐national
 bodies
 and 
the 
EU. 
Today,
 residencies 
are 
part 
of 
the 
mobility
and
 art policies 
of
 many
 governments
 and 
governmental 
bodies 
(in 
several
countries 
like 
France,
 Great‐ Britain, 
Finland,
 Sweden,
 Norway,
 Denmark,
Germany,
 Japan, 
China, 
South
 Korea,
 Australia
 and 
many 
others). 
So 
yes,
residencies 
have 
become
 institutionalised.
 However, 
there
 are 
many
 individual
enterprises 
by 
artists 
and
 cultural 
workers. 
The
 field 
is 
still 
very 
open 
for 
new
ideas.


A.S.: Kunsthuis
 SYB
 - a residency I’ve been affiliated with since 2010 - can be considered seen as a
 rural
 residency, 
which
 stands 
somewhere between
 the 
model
 of
 the 
retreat
 and
 that
 of
 the
 rural
 artists’
colony
 of
 the 
past.
 

How 
do 
you 
think 
that 
ideas
 of
 isolation 
and 
artists’
community 
can
 still 
play 
a
 relevant 
role 
nowadays 
for 
artists 
and 
art 
professionals,
 as
 well 
as 
for 
larger 
parts
 of 
society?
 

I.K.:
 That 
is 
an
 interesting 
question.
 Some
 thoughts 
I 
have 
now
 are
 that 
there 
are
new
 initiatives 
to 
create
 rural
 residencies
 that 
can 
provide
 better 
living
conditions
 and 
also 
to 
create
 facilities 
that
 are
 not
 available
 in
 cities.
 Mustarinda,
 a
 residency
 in
 Finland
 is 
such
 an 
example.
 Ecological
 thread,
weariness 
towards 
living
 in
 societies 
based
 on
 economical
 and
 consumption
values,
 the
 commercialisation
 of
 art markets
 and
 the
 search
 for
 different
lifestyles
 are 
some
 of
 the 
motives
 of
 the 
new
 21st‐century
 residencies.


Mustarinda’s Residency (Finland)

A.S.: 
Are 
there 
interesting
 examples 
from
 the 
past 
which 
you
 think
 are
 worth 
to 
look
 at 
when 
we 
think 
of 
the 
future 
of 
rural 
residencies? 

I.K.:
 I
 find 
it 
quite 
interesting
 how
 much
 the
 present
 situation 
resembles 
the
 period 
of 
European 
and 
American 
artist‐colonies 
movement 
in 
the
 20th century.
 Nature,
 alternative
 lifestyles,
 indigenous
 cultures, 
interaction 
with 
local 
people
and
 cultures 
seem
 to 
foster 
new
 inspiration, 
as 
happened 
also
 earlier.
 Personally, 
I 
believe
 that 
rural
 residencies
 have
 a
 lot 
to 
offer 
to urban
 cultural
workers
 and
 thinkers. 
See 
how 
the 
Banff 
Centre [an 
arts, 
cultural,
 and
educational
 institution 
located
 in
 Banff, 
Alberta, 
Canada] has 
defined
 the 
special 
character
 of
 their
 programme
 by 
a 
few
 basic 
components,
 which 
makes
them
 different 
from
 other 
art institutions:
 withdrawal;
 working
 in 
a 
self‐directed
manner
 while
 supported
 by 
a
 community;
 nature
 and 
what
 it 
can
 provide
 (in 
past 
colonies, 
walks 
in 
nature
 were
 a
 central 
part
 of
 the 
creative
process). 
All 
this
 makes 
the 
Banff 
Centre 
a 
good
 example
 for 
the 
future
 of
 rural 
residency
 in
my
 view.
 

Outdoor activities at Banff Art Center, Canada 

[onresidencies]

On RESÒ – International Network for Art Residencies and Educational Programs in Piedmont. An interview with Lisa Parola, RESÒ coordinator and member of the curatorial collective a.titolo (2/2)

Franco Ariaudo, "pom pons", installation, 2013. In Residence at Khoj International Artists' Association, New Delhi (India), 2013.

Residency experience: Openness/Closure 

Angela Serino (AS): I felt very often a certain tension among us operators of residencies between the need to be accurate in quantifying and demonstrating the results of a residency period, and the nature of these programs that in some ways support open processes of research, meeting and experimentation not necessarily finalized (or completed) into a new work. 

In your role as Resò coordinator and therefore somehow mediator between the various figures involved in the field - the resident artist, the hosting institution, the selecting one, the funders and the various possible publics, do you recognize this tension?

Lisa Parola (LP): I do not think it's a matter of results, it is rather a question of how the curatorial program which accompanies the residents is proposed to them. Over the last decades, new educational formats, methods, programs, models, processes and activities have become extremely frequent in the artists and curators praxis,  and these new approaches are changing the sense, the function of art. This transition has enabled curators, artists and cultural policies to produce either participatory and pedagogical formats or site specific projects that can be realized in different contexts, with different communities, in the short or the long term.

Amilcar Packer, "Let's Talk on Our Way", walking action, 2011. In Residence at PAV-Parco Arte Vivente, Torino, 2011 ph. Mattia Boero

Residency experience: Time

AS: According to Nataša Petrešin - Bachelez (former co-director of the Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, Paris) residency programs have a 'defferred value'. That is to say, that the results of a residency period very often become visible only over time, when they find form in a new work or by bringing new directions in the artist's practice.

As a consequence of this, I think that that the artist and his work should be followed in the period just after the residence, perhaps even more closely than the residency period itself. Today we should have the financial and curatorial capacities (vision and tools) to work with a new 'timeline', and adopt a new temporal perspective. To look for examples at the post-residency period with the same care with which we work in the period immediately before and during the residency [here, I speak from the perspective of the organizations involved]. Maybe we should even think of playing with time differently, for instance by offering residency periods that are not long, but shorter and more frequent.

Do you also feel the necessity to work with the residency timeline in a different manner and change the standard residency time structure?

LP: Time is a  focal point of the residence, but we should understand what we mean when we speak of time. It is not just the time spent in residence, but the time needed to process an experience. It's important to reflect upon the cultural, political, and economic changes taking place inside artistic institutions, residencies included. These issues have influenced the dynamics of the art world. How has the situation changed in respect to the issues of time, the institutions and cultural opportunities? There is a relationship between the museum, the artist residence and time. The museum—as the institution of tradition and identity—shares a similar destiny of ideological decline with the nation, which has lasted for many years now, as a consequence of the diverse cultural processes activated by the global economic system. Over the last decade, a significant part of cultural institutions have acknowledged their precariousness and are in the process of transforming themselves. This specific process is visible above all in contemporary art, where mobility, hybridity and the lack of a definite centrality push towards transformation through a positive experience of deterritorialization. This kind of deterritorialization, this process enters into a relationship with the residence experience and the idea of time: a suspended time but in constant flux, a time that activates reflections and new projects that do not necessarily culminate during the period of residence. The issue is not just to live, but also to use all those elements which during the residence are revealed in contradictory, distant or unclear frames. The position of the artist and the curator in the residence program is to recognize the differences in language and practice and to use these as an independent, flexible and active tools. A temporary situation capable of documenting the transition that we are experiencing. With Resò this aspect is in the artists propose program, but also in the relationships activated between the institutions involved. In 2010 when the program started, our mission was different as we were bringing together local practices and international activities. Later on we started to reflect on the nature of the contemporary as something not limited to the sphere of art and its production, but instead open to the observation of paradigms characterized by temporality and flexibility, the immaterial and the material tools, that artists are researching in these decades.

Paola Anziche', "A Clara", video, 201. In Residence at Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paolo (Brazil), 2011

RESÒ network and collaboration

AS: RESÒ is a regional network that has established a dialogue with an international network of institutional residences abroad, in countries such as Colombia, India, Egypt, Brazil - expanding beyond, in a certain sense, the Italian national context and the European one. According to you, where does this choice stem from?  

LP: In 2010, the CRT The Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art - CRT of Turin and the Resò curatorial team decided to enter in dialogue with international residencies characterized by a policy of undertaking highly innovative and experimental projects. After four editions, Resò today represents a curious geography between Piedmont, a small region of northern Italy, and very different contexts in political, social and economic spheres such as Townhouse in Cairo, Capacete in Rio de Janeiro, Khoj in New Delhi, and Lugar in Dudas in Cali. Each partner has its own history and its own curatorial and educational approach like a multitude of voices speaking at the same time. The Resò mission has been to connect some 20 artists from Piedmont, Egypt, Brazil, India and Colombia showcasing their shared research and experiences of living temporarily in a place, performing its work topics from another point of view. Together, curators and artists have developed a platform that from which to observe the changing directions of art and which constitutes open and in-depth research receptive to the question of what is contemporaneity today.

________________

General information: RESÒ – International Network for Artist Residencies: www.reso-network.net

The RESÒ platform is promoted and supported by the The Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art - CRT of Turin and consists of: Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, Turin; CESAC - Centro Sperimentale per le Arti Contemporanee, Caraglio; Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea; Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; GAI – Associazione Circuito Giovani Artisti Italiani, Turin; Eco and Narciso, Provincia di Torino; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Poirino; PAV - Parco Arte Vivente, Turin. The International partners are: Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; Capacete, Rio de Janerio/San Paolo, Brasil; Lugar a dudas, Cali, Colombia and  Khoj, New Delhi, India. In 2014 Resò program has introduced RESÒ/LAB: a form of short residency open to young artists and curators, the first edition was in partnership with Biruchiy Contemporary Art Project in the Ukraine.

Participating artists at RESÒ program till now: Paola Anziche', Francesca Macri' and Irene Pittatore, Alessandro Quaranta, Amilcar Packer, Dina Danish, Magdi Mostafa (RESÒ 1, 2011); Massimiliano and Gianluca De Serio, Eva Frapiccini, Ottavia Castellina, Jasmina Metwaly, Beto Shwafaty, Sunil Vallu (RESÒ 2, 2012); Fatma Bucak, Cosimo Veneziano, Franco Ariaudo, Malak Helmy-Nida Ghouse, Frame Works Collective, Luisa Ungar (RESÒ 3, 2013), Giorgio Cugno, Santiago Reyes Villaveces (RESÒ 4, 2014).    

[onresidencies]

On RESÒ – International Network for Art Residencies and Educational Program in Piedmont. An interview with Lisa Parola, RESÒ coordinator and member of the curatorial collective a.titolo (1/2)

RESÒ is the international art residency program for Piedmont. Started in 2010, the program is supported and promoted by the Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art CRT and brings together the leading Piedmontes institutions for contemporary art and education such as: Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, CESAC-Centro Sperimentale per le Arti Contemporanee; Castello di Rivoli-Museo d'Arte Contemporanea; Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto; GAI; Eco e Narciso; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte, PAV-Parco Arte Vivente. In this interview, art critic and member of a.titolo Lisa Parola speaks of the curatorial vision and the ambitions of the program, and the possible role of art residencies as tools to develop new forms of critical thinking and cultural responsibility.

Resò presentation at the 2015 Artissima Fair, Turin with: Lisa Parola (a.titolo), Dirk Snauwaert (director of Wiels), Cecilia Guida (director of Education Office of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto). ph AS

Participating artists at RESÒ program till now: Paola Anziche’, Francesca Macri’ and Irene Pittatore, Alessandro Quaranta, Amilcar Packer, Dina Danish, Magdi Mostafa (RESÒ 1, 2011); Massimiliano and Gianluca De Serio, Eva Frapiccini, Ottavia Castellina, Jasmina Metwaly, Beto Shwafaty, Sunil Vallu (RESÒ 2, 2012); Fatma Bucak, Cosimo Veneziano, Franco Ariaudo, Malak Helmy-Nida Ghouse, Frame Works Collective, Luisa Ungar (RESÒ 3, 2013), Giorgio Cugno, Santiago Reyes Villaveces (RESÒ 4, 2014).

Residency experience: Education

Angela Serino (AS): I'd like to start with one of the questions asked during Reso's presentation at the Artissima art fair last November. 'What relationship is there between the residency experience and the issues that occur from the ‘educational turn’?'. Can you comment on the relationship you see between the current growth of residency programs and the diffusion of different modes of education and alternative pedagogical methods as curatorial and artistic practices in recent years?

Lisa Parola (LP): In recent decades and on a global scale, artists' residencies have come to play a particularly central role in relation to theoretical and curatorial reflection on new methods, practices and production of artistic research. This also relates to the radical transformation of the art scene itself which in light of the reshaping of global geography, has seen the emergence of new focuses and new forms of the project and its production that often intersects with other disciplines and audiences.

During the historic passage around 1995 to the new millennium, with its acceleration of global processes and the new ways of meaning of contemporary in the cultural sphere, it is possible to speak about a passage between first and second generations of art residencies. In the tradition of Art the residency is a place: the exotic idea of living in an atelier for a year or more in a different geographical and historical context. Firstly, the residency is a cultural experience confined to the institutional scheme of art and culture. The first generation of artistic residencies is still attached to this closed dynamic.

The end of the last century, a time characterized by global acceleration and economic crisis, was also a critical time that involved Modernist narratives and the paradigms of culture and institutions; at this time different models of knowledge and different artistic practices were born. It is in these complex dimensions that a curatorial idea of the art residency as a temporary place, with temporary practices and audiences, that could be inside or outside of the system of Art started to take shape. In the global environment different forms of self-learning and subjectification started and opened new paths to political and cultural dimensions of  freedom by traditional schools and disciplinary devices. These different guidelines implied a contradiction and a conflict of elements, but also offered different tools with which to re-think the locality and the temporary experience.

RESÒ Traveling Box at the 2015 Artissima Fair, Turin. ph: AS 

AS: Can we say that residency programs have proved to be useful and valuable tools to produce informal knowledge - thinking about the participating artists and the audience at the hosting site?

LP: I would not speak of informality, but rather of the re-thinking of those spaces that take shape within complex geographies and political contexts. In 2010, when the Resò program started, it  was involved in the  process of globalization and defined itself as a network for international residencies and educational programs by a format of artist mobility defined as either IN or OUT. The Resò program involved the region of Piedmont, a small region of northern Italy, and cities in Egypt, Brasil, India and Colombia. On a theoretical level, Resò works with key questions such as ‘What role does the artist's residency play in the new maps of contemporary art?’, ‘What role does the residency play in the artistic research of the last decades?’, ‘ What instruments can be employed to aid the artist in understanding and operating within the host context?’, and ‘What relationship is there between the recent residency experiences and the questions that arise from 'educational turn'?’. Certain aspects of artistic research and curatorial practice today are new forms of critical thinking and cultural responsibility. Can the residency play a role in this process? So, an inherited palimpsest -the artists' residencies in the modernity - remains to be reworked and rewritten in the ways of other ways by others crossings spaces, actions, languages and technologies. Hence, the modernist paradigms where history is interpreted and the geography, economic and social issues in the time of globalization, are  perhaps better sustained in untidy mobility processes than in clearly defined representations secured in the mainstream.

Therefore, in the Resò program the value of the residency is the relationship between a temporary response to these urgent questions and the frame of countries where the social, historic and economic dimensions are undergoing radical change.

Resò postcard, 2014

Residency Experience: Production

AS: The presentation text of the Resò project states: "The Resò resident artists are encouraged to produce artworks that reflect on the current definitions of learning, of knowledge and of community and practice, giving back his/her personal view on the territory and the residency experience". This definition encompasses a rich range of elements. It refers to learning, knowledge, community, practice, and relationship with the host territory;  all of which are valid insights. It also makes clear that the emphasis, with regards to the final result of the Resò residences, remains that of the creation of  new work by the resident artist. Can you tell me more about it?

LP: In the Resò program artists are not restricted to merely producing something, but they are also encouraged to study and conduct research in the context of new geographical horizons, where methodologies and practices are profoundly different. They are asked to devise an object-document that describes the experiences encountered during the residency. Over the years, this was included in the Traveling Box designed by Archive Books in Berlin. The Traveling Box is a curatorial project conceived by Resò that draws on Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-valise (1941)  and Warhol’s Time Capsules (created between 1974 and 1987). It provides us with an artistic documentation of each edition of the program and an opportunity to provide a return on the cultural experiences. A true Fluxus-kit, an archive of memories and traces presented as a box of surprises and containing design objects, videos and art multiples. Thanks to an instruction booklet, it can be turned into a modular (DIY) exhibition which can be reassembled in different contexts. After the presentation at the 2015 Artissima Fair in Turin, the RESÒ Traveling Box will have the opportunity to travel to the foreign institutes involved in Resò program, but also to other art residency, academies, art centers and design schools.

Continues here

Resò presentation at the 2015 Artissima Fair, Turin ph: Sara Meloni

[onresidencies]

Coming up soon! Interview with Adam Sutherland, director of Grizedale Arts - the inspiring rural project sets in the Lake District in UK http://www.grizedale.org/ 

"Grizedale Arts operates as a research and development agency for contemporary artists. Its roll-call includes many high profile artists and creative practitioners from Turner Prize winning artist Mark Wallinger to veteran film director Ken Russell. Over the last decade it has acquired a significant reputation for developing emerging artists careers and pioneering new approaches to artistic production and presentation. Grizedale has worked with diverse prestigious organisations including PS1 MOMA (New York City), A Foundation (UK), and the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale (Japan). Director Adam Sutherland has written for many artists monographs (including Olaf Breuning, Juneau/projects and Marcus Coates) and regularly contributes to media publications and broadcasts.

The current programme focuses on awarding a number of research and development grants to artists and creative practitioners, enabling them develop ideas and projects in relation to the extraordinarily complex environment of the English Lake District. In contrast to traditional residency programmes, Grizedale has neither studios nor exhibition space, but instead provides artists with the opportunity to realise these projects using the social, cultural and economic networks of the local area and beyond. There is no requirement for artists to produce an exhibition product; the emphasis is on process and the dissemination of ideas, making this process accessible to a wider audience by siting active contemporary arts alongside the traditional culture of the rural environment."

[onresidencies]

"When spectators work, workers observe", collective interview with SYB former residents Alessandra Saviotti, Marianna Liosi, Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage ~2~

SYB as a Space of Production for Alessandra & Marianna (the curators)[factory/usership/ emancipation/ exchange/ residency/ collaboration]

Angela: In thelast years we have witnessed a growing interest by artists, curators and artprofessionals in general to discuss our conditions of work through discussions,projects and new works. What struck me was the peculiar perspective you chose in this project: the one of the spectator, rather than the one of the artist or the curator, as a worker. Can you tell me why it was necessary for you to put the spectator at the center of your project and why you chose to address the act of looking as working?

Alessandra: In my practice as independent curator and researcher interested in socially engaged art, the role of the spectator has always been an interesting point to take into account. How is it possible to sincerely involve the spectator, but not forcing him/her to take part in a project? How could the spectator change his/her role in a more active way and become active subject and not a sort of testing ground for the artist? How could an artist or a curator ‘use’ the spectator and vice versa in order to produce a new meaning/value? These are some of the questions I had in mind when we started investigating the role of the spectator as worker in the art context of SYB. I am not interested in considering the simple act of vision as an active action - I accept that it could be considered enough to activate something in your brain just looking at it - but I don’t feel it is enough. When I read  "Is a Museum a Factory?" by Hito Steyerl, I was amazed by the idea of the museum as a space where the spectators are transformed into workers who are temporary confined, as workers were in the factory. At the same time, I am fascinated by the idea of ‘remunerated usership’ introduced by Stephen Wright. What happens when the spectator is transformed into a user able to generate a value (which is not financial retribution, perhaps, but in some different form such as an object for instance)? Should the user be remunerated for the value that he/she has generated? I think the surplus value (in any form it is) should be redistributed within the community that produced it and I agree with Wright when he says that applied to an art context creator and user tend to merge: usership spills over into production. Usership is creation socialized, and as such engenders a surplus. And who is generating the surplus? The worker!

Marianna: The exploration of the spectator’s role has been pivotal in my research for long time. Considering the viewer as a worker refers to the values that he/she produces both within the frame of an exhibition and in front of a single artwork – these values being human relations, points of views on the reality or contents –. Therefore in this project I was interested in focusing the spectator's gaze and way of seeing as a crucial side of the art production. This belief echoes Jacques Rancière’s reflections on the spectator. He states: “Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting. (..) It begins when we understand that viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms this distribution of positions. (..) Being a spectator is not a passive condition that we should transform into activity. It is our normal situation. (…) Every spectator is already an actor in her story; every actor, every man of action is the spectator of the same story.” That’s why I considered it important to start our first public event with the re-enactment of Allan Sekula’s “Gallery Voice Montage” (An audio-installation piece composed of two white canvases hung side by side turn out to conceal a pair of loudspeakers over which secretly recorded comments by visitors to the gallery are played back). In this audio-installation pièce the gaze, the observation, the individual interpretation and the exchange of thoughts through discourse are at the core of the artwork. Of course, this doesn’t exclude that sometimes it’s also good to recall to “action”, as we did, for example, with the organization of the candy workshops directly involving the children of the village.

Angela: With this project you also tried to question the nature of SYB as a residency, a space devoted to research and experimentation through collaboration. These open processes however often need to be visible, to leave a trace that could give an idea to an expert and the general public of what occurred. What did you decide to make visible of your research-process, and what stayed invisible?

Alessandra: we arrived at SYB with a clear structure in mind that needed to be filled with content. The exchange between Marianna and I both with the artists and the members of the committee took the form of a flow that lasted for almost a year! So we felt like this process was worth being visible in the space, but we were really curious about how we were going to experience it. If you think about the idea behind the whole project that questioned what kind of work it is to be an artist or a curator, we felt the urgency to really make visible what it means to be researching, reading, drawing diagrams, discussing with guests and so on. I was also interested in the idea of writing a collective script: what does it mean for us to intervene in an art work? Is it just to give the framework or really to write it together? I think we didn’t solve this question, which was a crucial point in this project. In terms of residency, SYB was a sort of a space in between, a refreshing moment, but with the need to show a result. In fact in order to develop the project we got some external grants that required a presentation. How can you avoid this pressure? Maybe it is not possible.. And what would’ve happened if we really failed in presenting something at the end?

Marianna: We decided to stress the visibility of the research itself: the inspiring readings and the artworks, the discursive exchange with the guests, the time employed in this process. To make all this evident we used physical and digital tools. Firstly, Alessandra and I used to work every day in the exhibition space, in front of the big windows on the main street of Beetsterzwaag and this slowly attracted local people's attention. We progressively arranged the space of SYB with “environmental notes”: texts, drawings, diagrams and papers on the walls in the project space at the ground-floor. These were extremely useful for us and for anyone interested in what we were doing. We also used Syb’s blog in a very systematic way, uploading our research material in progress (texts and videos). What was occurring at SYB became also a visual essay published by our media partner Atpdiary, a bilingual (It/Eng) online blog focused on contemporary art. What stayed invisible, or more appropriately, stayed implicit were the spontaneous discussions and reactions that occurred between the four of us, which led to identifying the notion of “production” as the crucial, leading and controversial aspect of our residency.

Angela: How did you set the collaboration with the artists? Where did your work end and theirs begin?

Alessandra: Collaboration should be spontaneous. I mean that you should feel that collaborating with a person is right and it may be fruitful. This is what it pushed us to invite Cathleen and Marcel because they usually work in dialogue with other subjects like we do. I thought that their contribution would have helped us in developing another chapter of our research. And so it was. After we suggested that they analyze the text of Hito Steyerl, they proposed to reenact the original production of candies in the space, but this time having kids participating as a way to involve the local community without creating high expectations. The result at the end of the residency was the realization of the script, a process-based installation comprising a short film that they used as a research tool, like we used the reading materials proposed by the guests. Looking back at the pictures I realize that it was really impossible to understand who did what. Everything was mixed and it was very organic at the same time. So in a way we escaped the productive moment in terms of producing an exhibition. We rather created a structure with different layers. The rest was somewhat open and the result was not orchestrated, on the contrary!

Marianna: The collaboration started right at the beginning, as we applied as a group but the division of the tasks and the roles were also very clearly defined as well as the specific interests and expectations of each one of us. I don’t want to exaggerate, but actually the curatorial work intended in its complex articulation in a situation as such, never stops.

Read the previous post for the interview with the artists.

[onresidencies]

"When spectators work, workers observe", collective interview with SYB former residents Alessandra Saviotti, Marianna Liosi, Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage ~1~

"When spectators work, workers observe" is the title of the collaborative project developed by curatorsAlessandra Saviotti and Marianna Liosi with artists Cathleen Schuster and MarcelDickhage during their six week residency at Kunsthuis SYB in Friesland (Nov. 2014- Jan. 2015). In this interview, artists and curators speak of the inspirations and goals of such a project and explain their shared working method. 

Stemming from their shared interest in questioning the conditions of art and labor today, the curators and artists developed a layered research process with a dense program of public activities, going from a candy workshop with children of Beetsterzwaag,to a guest program with reading sessions and conversations, and regularfilm-screenings. In this attempt to analyze what it is that we mean when we talk ofartistic production and its relation to the condition of being in a residency,the new 'temporary' collective looked back at the previous use of SYB house as a candy factory and used this information as a starting point of their investigation.

All this different material became visible as a series of traces presented at the ground floor of Kunsthuis SYB on December 20. Here the visitors could find: reading material accumulated over time, diagrams on the walls, a sound installation with voices of the children who re-animated the old kitchen at the heart of the house, and an excerpt of "In order to produce", a film in progress playing between the reality of the candy workshops and the partly fictional memories recollected by an old woman. 

In this interview, artists and curators speak of the inspirations and goals of such a project and explain their shared working method. They also finally suggest how while working in residency at SYB, some actions usually related to the spheres of the private and personal became public and visible - and in some cases, the other way around.

Kunsthuis SYB as a Space of Production for Marcel & Cathleen (the artists)[candy-factory / fictional narrative / voice as a space of freedom / production/ residency/ collaboration]

Angela: There is a film still from your project "Gesten einer Arbeit" (2012) which suggests the idea that the body somehow keeps memory of the work through the repetition of everyday gestures we make. For SYB, together with the curators you have developed a series of candy workshops for children based on the previous use of the house as a candy factory. I wonder what you hoped to find in this reenactment. What did the voices, the actions of these young participants trigger in you and for the project?

Marcel: For the project at SYB, we were thinking of producing without producing - as artists in a residency, and so in a place that is probably demanding a certain output, whether cognitive, visual or materialistic. We wanted to reactivate the place as it once was with a small difference: during the workshops, the children should rule the business and their produced 'goods' should not be sold. 

Cathleen: During these workshops we ourselves, as artists and curators, turned into spectators, and so a little shift of roles took part. We wanted to open the space for an audience that is not the most typical art audience. The children were very curious about the space of SYB, which most of them had never entered before, and maybe a few of them will remember the workshops at one point.

Angela: Your works are mostly film essays where you recreate episodes and events from the past with the help of actors and participants who enact a script. It seems to me that these altered elements - of timelines and (reworked) roles are among your preferred strategies to express your point of view on issues of economical crisis, history, and the role of the individual in the social processes. Could you tell me a bit more about how you came to choose the fictional voice and storytelling as your favored tools for creating a space of freedom as artists?

Marcel: It's interesting that you mention 'fictional voices', as the material we use for our scripts, films and text-image works also goes back in part to documents and non-fictional authors, that we then rewrite or bring together with our own writing. The voices began to interest us as a sort of displacement that they can evoke together with an image, and that their continuity (in form of telling) can generate a discontinuity together with an image. 

Cathleen: Working with voices and actors enabled us to fold historical material onto contemporary issues and vice versa, and to enact or reenact (historical) material through both real and fictional characters, objects, natures, situations, whilst integrating oral histories, personal archives, many voices, and so to say, local contexts in relation to a global or globalized environment. A voice is not necessarily harmless, it may dictate a certain narrative, specifically as Off-Voice in the storyline of a film. Questions such as Who has a voice, who not?, Whose voice is speaking, through whom?, are accompanying our working processes. We are interested in the contradictions of different voices, and in situations that call the viewer into action, with her or his own voice so to speak.

Angela: During your final presentation at SYB in December, the term 'production' came up often in the conversation, even more than words like work and labor, suggesting that there was a certain pressure to make visible your process of open investigation while being in the middle of it. How did you cope with it?

Cathleen: The term production is occupying us in relation to both, a line of a manufacturing process like the candy production, and the production of an essayistic line for which readers or spectators are turned into producers. Our proposal for SYB entailed questioning the role of art institutions and especially residencies as factories. The workshops with the children were done for the moment, for this reason. To cope with a visible output was somehow not our initial aim. However, when it came to thinking about the final presentation we felt a kind of pressure to produce something. 

Marcel: What became visible for the final presentation was all our work in progress, next to some of the material we discussed and collected together with Alessandra and Marianna. During the residency we were further researching in our ongoing field of interests such as cognitive labor. To address the value of a working method that stays invisible for a while, or that needs an uncertain amount of time to further the process is an important point for us.

Angela: Your project at SYB is also an example of curators-artists' collaboration. How did you negotiate the labor of care (of yourself, of your relation, and of the house), and the other set of actions, which are usually associated with working on an art project (like i.e. having meetings, reading and discussing texts, writing press-text and collecting documentation)?

Marcel: I would say that this negotiation happened more naturally. If one of us felt like withdrawing it was easy to do so. And the same, when one of us felt the need to clean or if there was something to discuss about the project. However, we proposed every evening to watch one or two films together that were more or less related to our project and discussions. 

Cathleen: The collaboration also started notably before we actually joined together in SYB. We were establishing the communication online, because most of us were living in different places. Generating a space to share thoughts, texts, files and questions about the project beforehand was a very important part of our collaboration.

Read the following post for the interview with the curators.

[onresidencies]

Color- visit Air Antwerpen #5

UNVERIFIABLE BLUE (Carla Felipe, Mounira Al Solh)

Carla Felipe (Installation Views)

Mounira Al Solh (video still) "Now Eat my Script"

The former Customs House (Douane) ~ A kaleidoscopic and dense layer of visual imagery opens up in this modest one-floor building. Carla Filipe's installation of collages and drawings starts from the history of the Portuguese Jews (Sephardim) which she found on an old magazine in a local flee market.(The Sephardims were forced to fled to Antwerp in the 15th century to escape Portugal). In the opposite room, there is "Now Eat My Script", a new video by Mounira Al Solh. Here I watch large bags filled of clothes and any kind of belongings smuggled together with Syrian refugees at the border of Lebanon. It's what we have seen all summer on the TV news. But also a story that has its roots in the past..

In this place, where the origin and belonging of people and goods passing through the harbor was once certified, the artists draw new zig-zag trajectories of mobility of men, goods, and ideas, going back and forth in time and among places. They are unverified stories. Still they look much more real of the ones I can read on the history books and official registers.

"The blood of sensibility is blue", DJ

[onresidencies]

Color- visit Air Antwerpen #4

BLU NITIDO MAGNETICO

The blue is signaling aroute – pointing to what I should see in and outside the house. I'm not sure if there is a specific intention behind this choice of color though. Perhaps it is only me who is attracted by the magnetic force of this color.

Derek Jarman chose "blue" as the only color for his late film work. The film was his way to sew the wounds of his fragile condition; a way to cultivate the sight of memory; to animate the infra-ordinary of the last days of his life, to let the shadows of objects and people (he could still see from the corners of his eyes) talk.

This Magnetic Blue I found in Antwerp rejects the sacrality of Jarman's Blue for sure. It is undoubtedly much less pretentious. It does not want to "transcend the solemn geography of human limits" as in Jarman. On the contrary, it marks the human boundaries, it signals where they are, and partly where they were. It's a blue that does not stand for perfection, but it adds some magic to this Lynchiesh harbor... 

From the top in order: Blue of the Map; Blue of the house at the Kattenndijk lock (part of a work by Ria Pacquée) This is a "Deep Blue Surface"; Blue of the corridors (at the end of the corridor video by Shaun Gladwell).

[onresidencies]

Color- visit Air Antwerpen #3

“wishingtotellyouhowmuchIloveyoubutIcantfindthewordsBLU”

Walking down from the Cabinet Room, at the ground floor where I found a warm light blue: it's the installation by Laurent Dupont-Garitte. Laurent has visited the Belgian Ships Archive, one of the small brick houses across the building of AiR Antwerp. Here a few former sailors take care of the ships' archive that contains logbooks, stamps, administration, and pictures of all the ships that have sailed under Belgian flags until 1830. Among the things you can find in this archive, there are a number of painted portraits of ships. "These portraits are the result of the intense relationship the skippers built with their ships during their long voyages. Upon their return they often commissioned a painting of the ship, which had been their place of work and life for sometimes more than a year"[from the guidebook]. When I come closer, I can see that these copies are in reality black and white photographs painted over. Some are named after renown painters, like this one "Rubens".

There is a weird music playing in the room. "It is distracting, on purpose" - the guide says. "The artist wanted to recreate that feeling of inaccessibility and distrust that he encountered during his first visit at the Museum from the retired sailors". To me this blue seems to be a “wishingtotellyouhowmuchIloveyoubutIcantfindthewordsBLU” typical of certain men (which eventually find them at the end of their life). 

I go out and take the map. There is more blue outside.

[onresidencies]

Color- visit Air Antwerpen #2

The Cabinet of Traces 

[onresidencies]

Color- visit Air Antwerpen #1

BLU LAVICO (Laure Prouvost) 

It looks like a piece of rock erupted from an extraterrestrial volcano and now solidified. I cannot resist from touching and smelling it, but there is no smell. It used to be edible though. Alan Quireyns, the residency director, tells me that this gigantic piece of bread is the left over from a communal dinner organized by artist Laure Prouvost during her staying.

This is only one of the many items of "the Cabinet of Traces", an eclectic collection of objects left behind by the residents that Alan collects since 2012. There are no labels next to the objects on display. Only Alan knows what belongs to whom and can say it. It's meant to be like this: an oral storytelling that is renewed each time someone enters the room.

Continue here

[onresidencies]

Residency Visit. AiR Antwerpen. Belgium > A color-visit "AiR Traces: Austruweel" (12.09. 2014)

Austruweel is the old name of a polder village in the harbor area of Antwerp, where AiR Antwerp is located. The residency is in an area on the verge of transition, at the outskirt of the city: a liminal zone between the city and the harbor, a little ghostly. In this industrial landscape made of large containers and storage buildings, the old look-keeper's house (now the residency) and the few small brick houses scattered around are like old bastions reminding the size and the rhythms of a less globalized Europe. 

Austruweel gave the title to the group show I visited last September "AiR Traces: Austruweel" where fourteen Belgian and international artists -all former residents - were invited to conceive a new work from the traces found in the area. After some time, what I remember of that visit follows mostly a color and its shades. Blue turned this site-specific exhibition into a color driven experience.

What follows is a short journey through the exhibition following a blue thread.  More information on Air Antwerp and the exhibition here: http://www.airantwerpen.be/en/content/air-traces-austruweel

[onresidencies]

ON Residencies: what it is

What makes a residency different than but complementary to other existing support structures for art such as galleries, museums, artists’ studios, academies, or project rooms? Is a residency a place to rest or to produce? Does this precious time, rescued, or even stolen from the daily tasks and obligations at home and in one’s studio, offer artists and curators a renewed concentration useful to develop their practice in an open, unpredictable manner? Or, in opposition, are artists and curators submitted to the fate of migration from one residency to another to secure support for their work and thus go in residency simply to be able to produce, as Dieter Lesage provocatively suggests?

my desk (Fall 2014)

Jean-Baptist Joly, director and founder of Schloss Solitude – one of the first residency fellowships in Europe – once stated that “residencies are not museums, since they do not preserve collections”, neither schools “since there are no teachers”, but rather “forums of affinities”. For Joly, what makes a residency unique is the possibility of bringing together a group of talented people in a place imbued with a special history or spirit. “Over the time – he continues – residents develop a sense of closeness, a lasting relationship – in some cases even friendship”. As a research project in its initial phase, “ON Residencies” wants to search for experiences that are in between these opposite positions or trajectories: namely between the understanding of a residency as an idyllic refuge or shelter in the company of peers on the one hand, and the residency as the experience of a solitary mobile worker with no public voice or place in a community on the other.

Stemming from inspiring encounters and thoughtful conversations with resident artists and professionals accumulated over the years at Kunsthuis SYB, together with an expanding body of research gathered from several residency programs in and beyond Europe, “ON Residencies” is at this stage an online collection of texts, documents, images, and experiences poignantly in relation to, but also loosely connected to those questions. Rather than finding plausible answers, “ON Residencies” currently aims at generating concrete occasions and imaginative mechanisms to share – and eventually even multiply – these questions together with guests and other organizations and institutions, both online and on site.