OPEN CALL - UNIDEE Residency Modules: WAYS OF BECOMING - Module I - Fall/Winter 2024

UNIDEE and Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto are pleased to announce three open calls for participation in the Fall/Winter 2024 Season of UNIDEE Modules Ways of becoming: 25 Years with UNIDEE, promoted and curated by the UNIDEE Advisory Board.
For more information about the other two UNIDEE Modules: Ways of Becoming mentored by Susanne Bosch, Eva Rowson and Bianca Elzenbaumer please visit the statement page.

Following on from ‘Ways of instituting and artistic practices’ panel as part of the Ways of Becoming: 25 Years with UNIDEE talks programme happening in September, Unfolding Ecosystems: Institutional Practices from a Networked Perspective takes place (4 - 9 November 2024) is an opportunity to share and unpack your ongoing practice or action research with a group of peers and guest mentor Fabiola Fiocco: researcher, curator, and facilitator, UNIDEE Advisory Board member Alessandra Saviotti, and guest speakers who will join for a panel discussion.

Over the course of five days, a group of up to twelve people will engage in a programme of seminars and presentations, group discussions and critiques, workshops, visits, and other informal activities to discuss and rethink organisational and collaborative structures from a transnational perspective and imagine more equitable and sustainable working paradigms.

Keywords: Instituting / Situatedness / Commons / Embeddedness / Social Responsibility / Ecosystems / Dig where you stand / Maintenance / Infrastructure / Network / Constellations / Slowness / Scaffolding / Expanded Curatorship / Sustainability

Methodologies:
The Module aims to engage in collective reflection on the theoretical discourse surrounding 'ecosystemic' instituting practices and to imagine and discuss possible strategies and configurations that can effectively translate these concepts into shared practices and structures. Moments of collective reading and speculation will be interspersed with group exercises and less formal activities (ie. mapping, walking, gossiping). Participants are invited to co-create tangible or conceptual materials to share as part of a collective toolkit.

While the current artistic-institutional field is confronted and embedded in an increasingly deprived socioeconomic context, crossed by global and interconnected crises and conflicts, the critical scope of such initiatives has been gradually undermined by established patterns of absorption and alienation of emancipatory art practices by the art market. Two decades after the ‘social turn’ prompted by socially engaged art practices and the phenomenon of New Institutionalism (Ekeberg 2003; Farquharson 2006; Doherty 2006; Möntmann 2007; Kolb and Flückiger 2013), extant instituting experiments increasingly tend to prioritise infrastructural action, rather than engage in discursive and speculative practices, implementing other modes and structures of work and collaboration.

The module, titled "Unfolding Ecosystems: Institutional Practices from a Networked Perspective," aims to examine distributed, decentralised, cross-scale, and 'ecosystemic' modes of institutionalisation in the contemporary art system. Drawing from transfeminist and decolonial theories as well as natural sciences, these experiments aim to navigate and intervene in the contradictions and impasses of politically informed art work as much as the current economic and ethical constraints of art work. The ruangrupa collective's lumbung model, curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez's concept of 'slow institutions,' Void Art Centre and La Escoscesa's use of permaculture as an institutional model, and Casco Art Institute's recent ecosystemic shift are all examples of deploying ecological tropes and models against extractivist, hyper-competitive, and self-exploitative paradigms of production. A distinctive feature of these examples is an emphasis on collaboration, commoning, and mutual learning, in contrast to the principles of independence, ephemerality, and scarcity associated with neoliberal production. By implementing forms of infrastructural critique (Rogoff 2013; Vishmidt 2017; El Baroni 2022) and prefiguration, they seek to envision fairer labour structures, encompassing a holistic notion of sustainability that includes better management of environmental, human, and economic resources.

By analysing and comparing different 'ecosystemic' models, both in terms of scale, resources, and scope, we intend to discuss experimental forms of institution-building in the contemporary art field. We will look at different methods and modes of instituting, along with the terms and modalities of transnational collaboration, the geographies of creation and display, and the forms of transnational solidarity they engender.

We aim to invite a group of up to 10 residents to take part in each of the three modules.
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 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 module will take place at Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto using the UNIDEE Residency Programs space as a shared studio for group discussions, sharing sessions and presentations, with the opportunity for exploration and engagement with the postindustrial and rural landscapes of Biella.
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 UNIDEE Modules: Ways of Becoming is offered free of charge, and the residents will be provided with free accommodation at Cittadellarte. However, 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/242112935879363

Deadline for submissions is 1 September 2024, 23:59 (CET)

Fabiola Fiocco is a researcher, curator, and facilitator. She is an MSCA PhD fellow at the University of Edinburgh, with a research project on gender and labour in the curating and production of socially engaged art. Her practice focuses on the intersection of art and activism in a range of creative contexts, (post-)work imagery in contemporary art, non-hegemonic instituting practices, and the impact of feminist epistemologies on art histories and theories. She has been involved in various research clusters and projects and has presented her work at international conferences and events. She has worked in independent art spaces, museums, and foundations, including S.a.L.E. Docks (2012-15), Van Abbemuseum (2016), and AlbumArte (2019-21). She has collaborated with various online magazines and developed independent curatorial projects. She is a founding member of the curatorial collective goo and of the association [AWI] – Art Workers Italia.

Alessandra Saviotti is a curator, art educator and cultural activist who lives in Amsterdam. She is a PhD researcher at Liverpool John Moores University and a member of Art Workers Italia.
Her focus is on socially engaged art, collaborative practices and Arte Útil (art as a tool). Her work aims to realise projects where the public becomes a co-producer in the spirit of usership. She is a co-founder of the art collective Aspra.mente (2006-2016), a group which focusses on the common definition of ‘work in progress’, seeking the contribution of operators in fields other than art for interdisciplinary projects free from time constraints. Since 2014 she has been collaborating with the Asociación de Arte Útil founded by Tania Bruguera, especially aiming to emancipate usership around the Arte Útil Archive. She is currently busy researching how alternative education models framed as Arte Útil could be successfully implemented within the institution of education, fostering sustainability and hacking the institution itself.
Alessandra studied at IUAV, Venice and she was a Jan van Eyck Academie fellow in Maastricht (NL). She curated programmes, and delivered talks & workshops at documenta15 as part of Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (CU/DE); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (US); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (NL); San Francisco Art Institute (US); California College of the Arts (US); SALT, Istanbul (T), The Whitworth, Manchester (UK), Chicago Architecture Biennial (US), University of the Arts Helsinki (FI), MAXXI, Rome and many more. She was assistant curator for Visible. Office and Project Space, Brussels (BE), a tutor for Accademia Unidee 2020, and she was a mentor at UNDEE in 2018, 2020/2022.
www.alessandrasaviotti.com