RESIDENCY SESSION: FEBRUARY-MARCH, 2021, GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

DEADLINE: November 20, 2020 | 11:59pm/ 23:59 (Minsk time)

The Call for applications for a 2-months residency program for Belarusian artists is announced by the STATUS project. The STATUS project was launched in 2018 as an exchange between Belarusian and Swedish artists, cultural workers and organizations with the aim to observe and analyze the role of artists in changing society. It is coordinated by Konstepidemin in Gothenburg and gallery KX in Brest and funded by the Swedish Institute. 

RESIDENCY PROGRAM

The residency program is a part of the STATUS project 2021-2022 and focuses on the areas:

• Self-organization
• Freedom of expression
• Equality
• LGBTQ
• Heritagization (Heritage making)
• Climate crisis

Experience and interest in working in these areas mentioned above will be prioritized, though other fields of interest can be considered as well. 

Participants in the residency program will have an opportunity to meet with other artists-in-residence from Belarus, collaborate with Swedish artists interested in the same field (residency companions), and share their work in different ways – publishing or blogging on the project’s platform statusproject.net, participating in public talks and presentations in Sweden and Belarus, and in the Second Congress of Belarusian Cultural Workers in 2022 in Minsk. 

CONDITIONS AND FACILITIES

The residency offers artists-in-residence accommodation, a stipend covering living costs, working space, technical guidance, access to organizing public talks and events, and an established network of professional contacts. 

WHO MAY APPLY FOR RESIDENCY

• Artists with documented work shown, performed, or published during the last 5 years.  
• Curators and art managers connected to art organizations and art communities with experience of working with the next fields of interest: Self-organisation, Freedom of Expression, Equality, LGBTQ, Heritagization (Heritage making), Climate crisis.

Applicants should be living and working in Belarus or had to leave Belarus lately because of political persecution. We introduce this limitation as one of the residencies aims is to support Belarus-based artists in difficult conditions of ongoing repressions. 

Taking into consideration the need to communicate with the Swedish artistic community, basic knowledge of English is required. 

HOW TO APPLY

Please, fill in the application form by the link until November 20, 2020. 

The organizers will ensure secure communication and privacy of the provided information.

If you have any questions, please, contact us via email status.project.by@gmail.com

All applicants will be informed about the selection results via email on November 30, 2020.

ADMISSION 

A selection committee of the project team and partner representatives will consider applications by the content of the portfolio and experience and interest of working in the areas of the project’s focus. The long list of selected applications will be sent to a reference group of future collaborators. After feedback from the reference group, the selection committee will make the final choice. If necessary, video calls will be organized. Also, the project will ensure representation balance.

The Selection Committee will be represented by STATUS project leaders – Mona Wallström, Denis Romanovski, and Inga Lindarenka, STATUS online platform Commissioning Editor – Vera Kavaleuskaya, gallery KX art director – Lizaveta Mikhalchuk, ‘The Collective Brain’ network representatives.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the dates of the residency can be changed.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

STATUS is a collective research project (launched in 2018) that brings together artists and cultural workers with a common goal to analyze the conditions of artistic practice and give visibility to the people who conduct it in today’s world. Moreover, it encourages them to see their political potential in initiating change. The STATUS project has been created by the joint coordination of Swedish and Belarusian partners: Konstepidemin in Gothenburg and gallery KX in Brest with main support from the Swedish Institute. 

The STATUS  has its online platform that makes produced knowledge visible and available to the broader public and professionals. The content of the platform is a collection of contributions that have been created in the process of the STATUS project within the artistic research groups Hidden Life, Heritagization, and (non)work, and commissioned texts by other authors from various relevant fields. 

In the frames of the project, a range of exhibitions, workshops, public talks, artistic camps were organized in Belarus and Sweden, including the Congress-performance of cultural workers hosted in Minsk. Also, the publication ‘Artistic Positions in Changing Society. Observations from Belarus and Sweden’ that contains texts and artworks documentation in terms of STATUS project was published.