UNIDEE Residency Modules: NEITHER ON LAND NOR AT SEA - Module IV – Autumn 2023 | open call & selected residents
UNIDEE Residency Programs and Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto are pleased to announce an open call for participation in the fourth module of the residency programme Neither on Land nor at Sea. Meeting by the Mediterranean Im/Possible, curated by UNIDEE Visiting Curator Chiara Cartuccia.
Module IV, Autumn 2023 is co-curated by UNIDEE Visiting Curator with invited mentors Francesca Masoero & Shayma Nader (QANAT) and Nouha Ben Yebdri (MAHAL).
Neither on Land nor at Sea invites to meander around unreducible complications and on shifting grounds, to explore together ways in which geography is historically, socially, and politically produced. The project pluralises Mediterranean concepts/spaces as sites of worldmaking and experimentation in communal living. To do so, it adopts un-grounded geographies and colliding historicities as meeting places, in which to congregate to elaborate on the role played by situated practices and shared processes in the promotion of social transformations, towards epistemic justice.
The UNIDEE modules are programme-based, short-residency formats. Participating residents will be offered the opportunity to expand on their ongoing research and practice exploring Mediterranean complexities and geographical thinking in the arts and beyond, within a group of peers and invited guests. The modules are interlinked, and each contributes to shaping the discourse developed by the project as a whole.
For more information about the curatorial framework, context and scopes of the project, please visit Neither on Land nor at Sea website here.
Taking place from 10 to 19 October 2023, Module IV is conceived as a double module, jointly co-curated by invited mentors Francesca Masoero & Shayma Nader (QANAT) and Nouha Ben Yebdri (MAHAL).
Conceptual Note by the Mentors:
“E da quel giorno, l’uomo selvatico abbandonò la valle” / “And since that day, the wild creature disappeared from the valley” (provisional title) is a two-week long module inviting to explore the uncanny, the magical, the political, and the ways we can engage with them through collective and vernacular pedagogical processes.
Once upon a time, the valleys surrounding Biella were populated by magical creatures carrying and sharing wisdoms embedded in and embodied by its soil and seeds, its waters and rocks. Today Biella is often perceived by its inhabitants as a city-archipelago, a fragmented territory notwithstanding its relatively limited geography.
As we witness the loss of collective memories and ways of knowing, societal fractures, environmental depletions and life extractions, this module looks for the political in the fantastical and summons it back, while exploring and testing ways in which we can be-come together otherwise.
Adopting a situated perspective, we will draw from fables/ing, politics and forest ecologies, exploring forms of listening and learning from the territories we inhabit, and how we could bring back the wisdoms and creatures deeply embedded in forest and river ecologies. Based on intimate and sensitive cartographies developed during the two weeks, we will investigate how to design spaces to gather and be together, places to shelter the left-over and the left-aside.
This double module is an experiment in collaboration, bringing together the research, practice and methodologies of QANAT and Silent Pedagogies. Led by Francesca Masoero & Shayma Nader, QANAT is a collective platform exploring the politics and poetics of water and the ways in which manifestations of commoning come to form in Morocco, Palestine and beyond. Initiated by Nouha Ben Yebdri at MAHAL, “Silent Pedagogies” evolves and revolves around modes of transmission in the field of contemporary art drawing from contextual and non-institutionalized cultural manifestations and learning institutes.
Methodology:
Walking, journaling, storytelling on pluriversality, collective reading, constructing structures/houses, re-enchantment & hospitality to the invisible, cooking, playing…
The residency programme’s working language is English.
We aim to invite a group of up to 10 residents to take part in the module. The programme is open to international participants of all backgrounds, whose practice sits anywhere across the broad spectrum of visual practice and research, with no restriction regarding disciplines, media or methodologies of work. Applications from artists, curators, writers, theorists, activists, all are welcome and encouraged.
The selection of participants will be based on the affinity of the subject matters, concerns and questions participating in the applicant’s work with those expressed by the curatorial framework of the project and the conceptual positioning of the selected residency module, as well as on the applicant interest and ability to contribute to a programme-based residency whose working is grounded in processes of active exchange and participation.
The residency modules will take place at Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, in Biella, Italy. The UNIDEE and Cittadellarte spaces will host a large part of the programme, while further opportunities for exploring the urban and rural landscape of Biella and its immediate surroundings will be offered.
Participants will be accommodated within the premises of Cittadellarte, in single rooms with the use of shared bathrooms. The residential spaces offer basic cooking facilities and communal resting areas.
Participants arrival is expected by the afternoon of the day prior to the beginning of the module, departure is expected by the afternoon of the day following the end of the module.
We are committed to meeting to the best of our ability any accessibility requirements an attendee may have; this will be discussed individually with prospective residents.
Further information regarding practicalities and FAQ available here.
Participation in the Autumn module is offered free of charge, and the residents will be provided with free accommodation at Cittadellarte.
Residents will be required to arrange and cover expenses for their travel to/from Biella and for the food/living costs whilst in Cittadellarte.
A limited number of partial and full travel bursaries are made available to those who would not otherwise be able to participate; please remember to state in your application whether you would like to be considered for this opportunity.
The team at UNIDEE remains at your disposal to support you in the travel arrangements and in the visa application process. Additionally, the team will provide you with any documents you may need should you decide to pursue other funding opportunities through your local art councils or via international platforms / funding bodies.
To apply please fill in the form at this link: https://form.jotform.com/231512751619050
Deadline for submissions is 09 July 2023, 23:59 (CEST).
Qanat is a collective platform that explores the politics and poetics of water to reflect and act (up)on the multiple contextual understandings and forms of (re)production of the commons in Morocco, Palestine and beyond. Drawing from various forms of knowledge and acts of resistance and solidarity to dominant environmental narratives and injustices, QANAT aims to create spaces through which we can speculate upon new collective imaginaries to design new spatial and epistemological configurations for our cities. The collective develops archives of resonant reflections and actions that knit together local struggles into transnational patterns for nourishing debates across dispersed localities. QANAT was initiated at LE 18, Marrakech.
www.qanat.org
www.le18marrakech.com
Francesca Masoero works as a curator, cultural organiser and researcher. She is part of LE 18, a cultural space in Marrakech (Morocco), where she initiated QANAT. With a background in critical theory and political economy, she explores notions resistances in multiple forms, including testing collective-making processes within and beyond the art field, and researching the politics and poetics linked to watery worlds and to forms of being together otherwise. Since 2019, she has also been collaborating extensively with the Dar Bellarj Foundation (Marrakech - Morocco).
Shayma Nader is is an artist, curator and translator from Palestine. For the past few years, she's been developing and organising workshops and projects focussed on forging and reactivating memories of and in the land through collective walking, listening and fictioning to move towards decolonial and land-centred imaginaries and practices. She is a member of Qanat; a collective platform exploring the politics and poetics of water, and a PhD candidate in artistic research at ARIA at Sint Lucas School of Arts and University of Antwerp.
MAHAL is a non-profit organisation created in Tangier in 2019, by the Tangeroise curator Nouha Ben Yebdri. It has been established as a platform whose principal mission is to respond to the structuring needs of the contemporary art scene in Morocco, by conceiving and practising alternative ways to navigate the challenges specific to the context.
Today, the organisation develops two main projects: Mahal Art Space, an independent exhibition space that promotes and supports emerging artists and cultural practitioners in the early stages of their careers; and Silent Pedagogies, a long-term program for reflection and artistic experimentation around transmission and mediation practices, questioning the objectives, methodologies and impact of actions and activities that accompany and sometimes shape contemporary creation, at both academic and institutional levels.
Nouha Ben Yebdri is an independent curator, founder and director of MAHAL, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to respond to and accompany the needs of the emerging contemporary art scene in Morocco, from its headquarters in Tangier. Her curatorial practice focuses on the reflection and conception of projects around issues related to the development of art spaces, institutionalisation procedures, mediation/outreach protocols, and the impact that these spaces have on their environment; as well as the study of contextual factors that influence the conception of the terms and dynamics that unfold through these processes and places. These efforts are conveyed and put into practice through the programming of the independent space Mahal (or also known as Mahal Art Space) and Silent Pedagogies - بيداغوجيات صامتة , a program that questions the curricula of artistic training in Morocco and analyzes the relationship of art spaces with the different audiences it hosts and works with.
Some of the projects she has curated through these two programs include: the Méta Skholé Libre workshops (with Jean-Paul Thibeau); the group exhibitions Iconographies de la rue (with Think Tanger), Tangier: Facets of a Mediterranean Intersection (with Robin Vermeulen), and What Dies Last, an online and in-person show; Maared/ Aarada - معرض/عراضة, an exhibition and public program (with Mouhawalat collective); undercurrents, an independent training and learning platform, together with LE18, Derb El Ferran and Fondation Dar Bellarj, both based in Marrakech.
UNIDEE Residency Programs is made possible thanks to the support of Regione Piemonte, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, CRT Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, illycaffè S.p.A., Fondazione Zegna, project "Alexandria:(re)Activating common urban imaginaries" of European Union’s Creative Europe programme, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, Institut Français Italy, Kimonos Art Center.
