OPEN CALL - UNIDEE Residency Modules: WAYS OF BECOMING - Module II - 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.

In this hands-on module (18 - 22 November 2024) with mentor Susanne Bosch and facilitator Beatrice Catanzaro, participants will explore artistic attitudes and qualities of an art practice that intends to invite others into the art-making process in a responsible and responsive way.

The workshop explores gestures of hosting others in an artistic process.
Participants will conclude the week with a joint “sensory manifesto” of experiences, examples and methods we encountered during our time together. We will also experiment forms of storytelling of this often temporary work.
The module will continuously flow between content, creative form finding, and reflection on the embodied experiences.

The week will consist of a day-by-day exploration of fields such as:
- Ways of getting to know others
- Leadership from the personal to the systemic using dialogue, facilitation and the co- creation of innovation to address complex challenges.
- Negotiation: Conflict and power resolution and its acceptance communication via creative exercises
- Practice: Participants work alone or in small teams to find an idea for an intervention that deal with hosting a situation hands-on artistic practice,
- Collective Storytelling and harvesting: Communicating, sharing and passing on a process, project, experience in the best possible way.

Keywords: Knowledge Production / Artistic Research / Conversation / Exchange / Participation / Informality / Sharing

Methodologies:
In this module, the methodologies will encompass a variety of approaches, including collective and individual exercises that foster group dynamics and personal reflection; walking as a means of artistic exploration and connection with the environment; embodied practices focusing on physical engagement and sensory experiences; site and context explorations; and critical cartography. There will also be sharing and feedback sessions. Insights and learnings from the week’s activities will be gathered during harvesting sessions to shape a joint "sensory manifesto."

Friendship, Otherness and Togetherness
John Jordan speaks as an artist and activist about the attitude needed to establish trustful relationships within the field. This approach, often termed relational art, is founded on mutual respect, trust, partnership, and friendship. The philosopher Jacques Derrida’s understanding of friendship can help illuminate the qualities of such relations: Derrida emphasizes that friendly cooperation or the concept of friendship itself aims at the integration of the other and thus fosters dialogue with and between many different entities. According to Derrida, a good friendship is not based on equality but on embracing otherness.

Conflict and Learning
In meaningful cooperation between heterogeneous groups, which do not try to level out all differences with a soft totalitarianism of equalness, but involve conflicts, one can usually identify alternative communication and dialogue structures as an integral part. The dialogue principle has been central to social art practices since the avant-garde. According to Grant Kester's concept of Dialogical Aesthetics [1], the unique quality of art involving others is grounded in the quality of relationships among all participants.

Preparation for participants
Participants will be offered a small reader with extracts from the following authors in good time. The reader is an optional resource, not a requirement: Social Presencing Theatre: Arawana Hayashi, John Jordan on Creative Activism, Theory U, BATNA / Negotiation: Exercises from the Program on Negotiation (PON), Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts, Joanna Macy, Art of Hosting, Dialogical Aesthetics, Grant Kester, Harvesting, Adrienne Maree Brown, Machado de Oliveira, Pauline Oliveros, Rebeca Solnit, Anna Tsing.

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)

 Susanne Bosch is an artist, art based researcher and teaches. She achieved a PhD about her public artwork in 2012. From 2007-2012, she developed and led the Art in Public master programme at the University of Ulster in Belfast together with Dan Shipsides. She works predominantly in public and on long-term questions, which tackle creative arguments around the ideas of democracy. Works include among other things issues around money, migration, surviving, work, societal visions and participation models. She formally uses site- and situation-specific interventions, installations, video, drawing, audio, dialogic work, in addition formats such as writing, speaking, listening, workshops, seminars and Open Space conferences. She is a trained Open Space facilitator (2008) and trained in conflict analysis and - management (2004). Susanne works internationally on exhibitions and projects.

Beatrice Catanzaro (PhD) is an artist, researcher and teacher. Her practice questions social hegemonic (visible and invisible) structures through collective imaginary, and dialogical processes grounded in long-term engagements and inter-disciplinary collaborations. She has been working throughout Europe, the Middle East and India. Between 2010 and 2015, she lived in Palestine, where she taught at the International Art Academy of Palestine (Ramallah) and co-founded the Women Centre and social enterprise Bait al Karama in the old city of Nablus. Her work has been exhibited in museums and international venues such as the MART Museum of Rovereto, Fundacao Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló (EACC) in Spain, Quadriennale of Roma. She currently lives in Milan (Italy), where she teaches at the NABA Art Academy.