OPEN CALL - UNIDEE Residency Modules: WAYS OF BECOMING - Module III - 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 ‘The Ecological Turn’ panel as part of the Ways of Becoming: 25 Years with UNIDEE talks programme happening in September, Cracking Concrete: making and maintaining radical structures through place-based practice (2 - 6 December 2024) is an opportunity to share and unpack your ongoing practice or action research with a group of peers, guest mentors Eva Rowson: artist, curator and Managing Director of Bergen Kjøtt, a non-profit creative production house and cultural venue (Bergen, Norway) and Bianca Elzenbaumer: design researcher and founder of Brave New Alps, CIPRA and Comunità Frizzante, and UNIDEE Advisory Board member Andy Abbott.

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 responsive and informal activities through which you will gain multiple perspectives on the work you are undertaking in your locale. Together we will explore practical and theoretical tools that can be used to create radical and equitable structures through place-based practices.

Keywords: Community / Locality / Place / Environment / Nature / Public Space / Commons / Embeddedness / Social Responsibility / Interculturality / Dig where you stand / Maintenance / invisible structures and barriers / reformist and abolitionist strategies / Access / Infrastructure (physical and societal)

Methodologies: Sharing sessions, collective exercises, fermenting, thinking together, collating references, cooking, reading.

“The brick wall is what you come against when you are involved in the practical project of opening worlds to bodies that have historically been excluded from those worlds. An organisation can be a world; a neighbourhood; a street; a home; a nation.”
Sara Ahmed, Hard, 2014.

Practitioners working in place-based, site and context-responsive ways all over the world are often met with the same challenges. We may hope to facilitate positive change and renewal through a collective reimagining and harnessing of the unseen potential of a space, building, community, area etc. 'but at the same time we must work within a given structure or, as Owen Griffiths puts it (referencing the Swedish popular education movement), ‘dig where we stand’.

How do we work for sustainable, equitable change within hard, concretised structures - physical, societal, historical? What tools are required to do this work: to make and maintain change (and not in the process push ourselves to the point of cracking)? Can we find fissures in these concrete structures to test possibilities for fundamental, creative and radical developments in our localities which we can scale up to build new worlds?

Maintenance is a slow, enduring, dedicated form of care that can go without being celebrated or even noticed. It is hard work (as feminist, activist writers Sara Ahmed and Audrey Lourde remind us) because these structures have deep foundations. Maintenance, however, also sustains transformational change, nourishes progress and creates an embedded revolution for the change we want to see in the world. In relation to gardening, growing and building communities, maintenance is also key to developing sustainable growth, learning from experience and working from the ground-up.

At the same time, the opposite of concrete is not “structureless”. As Jo Freeman writes in 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness', structure can also be radical and provide vital support and empowerment , especially for those excluded from history´s concrete partitions.

In our locally-embedded, revolutionary work, what new structures are we building and how do we build these collectively, taking care of different voices and perspectives, and not just replicate the same structures that we are trying to demolish?

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)

Eva Rowson is an artist, curator and Managing Director of Bergen Kjøtt, a non-profit creative production house and cultural venue (Bergen, Norway). In 2021, Eva co-founded GRIP at Bergen Kjøtt – a unique training programme in Norway to empower more women, non-binary and transgender people in live sound engineering.
Her curatorial work is rooted in hosting, maintenance and collaboration – focusing on how different types of work are valued, and with what consequences. This is at the core of her ongoing maintenance work at Bergen Kjøtt #AdventuresInConcrete as well as curatorial projects including: 38b - the living room exhibition space (with Luke Drozd, London, 2010-18), "Como imaginar una musea?" - a Catalan-Spanish-English imagining of a feminist cultural institution (BAR Project, Barcelona, 2017-19), and "Who’s doing the washing up?", a curatorial programme on institutional re-imagining (Re-Imagine Europe, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway / Lighthouse Brighton, UK, 2018-19). Since 2020, Eva has directed the module "Collaborative Practices" on the Fine Arts Masters programme at the Art Academy of Bergen, University of Bergen.

Bianca Elzenbaumer is a design researcher based in the Italian Alps. She is a founding member of the design practice Brave New Alps and is co-president of CIPRA International, an environmental NGO spanning the alpine arc. Her 40-year research plan focuses on supporting and creating community economies and commons starting from the places she lives in. She is a co-founder of Comunità Frizzante – making drinks to make community.

Andy Abbott is an artist, writer, curator and arts organiser who lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. He has exhibited and performed internationally as an individual artist and in various collaborations including the art collective Black Dogs. He has undertaken exhibitions, commissions and residencies for Tate Modern, London; MK Gallery, Milton Keynes; SWG3, Glasgow; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; Museum of Oxford; and Yorkshire Forward; and has completed residencies for Gasworks, London; in PiST, Istanbul; and Convivio, Oaxaca.
He is a former UNIDEE resident at Cittadellarte, which he completed collaboratively with his partner Yvonne Carmichael in 2006. He was Visiting Curator for UNIDEE residency programs in 2020/22.
In 2012 Andy was awarded a practice-led PhD from the University of Leeds with a thesis on "art, self-organised cultural activity and the production of postcapitalist subjectivity". His research interests are in Do-It-Yourself culture, artist-led initiatives, alternative economies and postwork futures.
Recent and forthcoming writing includes articles and book contributions on the creative case for Universal Basic Income.
As an arts organiser and curator he has produced a public programme for the embedded arts organisation In-Situ in East Lancashire, piloted the Centre for Socially Applied Arts at the University of Bradford, and was a director of the Community Interest Company Art in Unusual Spaces.
www.andyabbott.co.uk