CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR A RESIDENCY GRANT
at UNIDEE – University of Ideas
Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy
Residency period: 30th September - 30th November, 2019
Deadline for submissions: July 10th, 2019
Launched by Michelangelo Pistoletto in 1999, UNIDEE is the higher educational programme for art and social change of Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto. Weaving together moments of interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and practical activities, the objective of the programme is to provide the participants with inspiration, motivation and instruments to activate or develop artistic initiatives based on the engagement of local ecologies. Open to artists and professionals from all over the world through residential dynamics, the programme intends to form “artivators”, i.e. people working at the boundaries between artistic practices, processes of social change and collaborations with communities outside the art world.
UNIDEE started as a four-month international residency programme (1999-2013), to enhance its model in 2015 by focusing on annual themes and developing three formats: UNIDEE Modules, UNIDEE AIR - Emerging Geographies and the UNIDEE Connective Residency.
UNIDEE Modules are intensive weekly residential modules open to students, professionals, activists and members of the civil society. They are led by artist-mentors with the support of guests coming from other disciplines, for groups of 10 to 12 participants.
UNIDEE AIR - Emerging Geographies is the international artists residency program organised in partnership with other art institutions, with the aim of supporting the practice of artists coming from non-Western countries. Every year four international artists stay in residence for eight weeks at Cittadellarte with the aim of entering in contact - though meetings, studio visits and travels in other cities - with the Italian cultural scene, and deepen their research interests.
Launched in 2015, the UNIDEE Connective Residency programme is revolved to Italian artists with the aim of connecting their work with the local context of Biella.
ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY
A 2-month educational residency program based on the relationship between participatory art practices and the socio-political transformation of society.
The 2 month residency programme will revolve around the UNIDEE Fall Term programme titled Modes of Instituting which aims at investigate how artists are currently engaged in stretching the very notion of artistic practice beyond the dominant model of art making (Jason E. Bowman, 2016), to invent new organizations that expand art’s intervention into society. We refer to this methodology as instituting - i.e the process of institution building as a cultural and critical act. At Cittadellarte the act of instituting responded to four principles: engaging in long terms projects, promoting social critique, favouring collective participation on local scale, and endorsing multidisciplinary discussion.
The Fall Term is dedicated to imagine the role of art organizations in times of perennial crisis, and to discuss what would be their future(s) in the next coming twenty years. A group of eight international applicants will be selected to follow a two months program of workshops and conferences. Artists and curators that gave life to emergent institutional models and art organizations will be invited as Visiting Professors to share their experiences and concerns.
The final aim of the term will be to write, all together, an ethical charter of how contemporary art organizations should work as places for political agency, community building and social change.
To dowload the detailed call and application, please click here.
