Call for Web Residencies No 16
»Solidarity is a verb«
by Akademie Schloss Solitude and ARC Bucharest & curated by Anca Rujoiu — May 15, 2021
With this call, curated by Anca Rujoiu, Akademie Schloss Solitude together with ARC Bucharest invites artists and collectives to foreground the relational quality of solidarity. With »Solidarity is a verb,« we strongly encourage practitioners to shape a continuous production of relation grounded on common differences. While projects can inhabit the web as a space to practice solidarity, this open call encourages in equal manner initiatives that unfold on a local or translocal dimension beyond the screen, whereby the interconnection between off- and online should be taken into account.
In multifarious ways and different economic and political circumstances, artists and cultural practitioners have imagined and shaped modes of connectivity and togetherness. Our present and future hinge on collective action and assumed interdependence between and beyond places, between and beyond humans. The restrained mobility and the prolonged state of stillness we are experiencing on a planetary scale provide the impetus to reconfigure and construct new alliances from below, thus moving away from financially viable networks shaped by the market. This open call foregrounds the relational quality of solidarity, its ability to articulate politics and construct collective agency as a necessity of now. New and existing artist collectives, practitioners across the fields of art, design, writing, and performing arts invested in collaborations and collective approaches are invited to submit proposals.
»Solidarity as a verb« is situated in the realm of doing and imagining. First, this understanding acknowledges that one cannot take for granted forms of relationality and pre-existing communities; we need to continously construct and sustain them. Solidarity as such is always intentional and process-oriented. Historically, solidarity embodied colonial attitudes, it has been idealized and limited to prerequisites of sameness and identification. Shifting from a shallow understanding of »global sisterhood,« feminist thinkers reclaimed solidarity as a continuous production of relation grounded on common differences and politics of location. »The most principled way to cross borders« (Chandra Mohanty), solidarity can account for significant similarities while intensifying encounters with contextual differences , have a political basis rather than strictly biological or national, remain attuned to one’s immediate locale while reaching outside. Lastly, solidarity as a verb entails a definition of solidarity as an inventive practice (David Featherstone) that can shape unexplored ways of relating and expand the boundaries of a community with whom we stand in solidarity. In times of severe state and military control, artists have circumvented limitations of resources and mobility and stretched their locality through heterogenous initiatives from residencies, festivals, and mail-art communication to publishing and editorial endeavors. In the spirit of such past initiatives, this open call encourages practitioners to imagine new ways of negotiating distance and proximity. While projects can inhabit the web as a space to practice solidarity, this open call encourages in equal manner initiatives that unfold beyond the screen, whereby the interconnection between off- and online should be taken into account.
Open the Artworks
Juror's Statement by Anca Rujoiu — Sep 3, 2021
Selecting proposals out of 150 submissions for a call on »Solidarity as a verb« summoned us to align the criteria guidelines with the concept. It was expected that projects be relevant to the call, as well as embody concerns and urgencies of our time, and stem from different localities. While the concept of solidarity tends to be fixed to a limited number of interpretations and uses, in our selection we aimed to foreground a diversity of artistic approaches and methodologies. Some projects take solidarity as a governing principle for setting up new digital infrastructure and support structures, or as a form of artistic engagement with a community. Other projects prompt discussions, encounters, and historical research that form the basis of critical and imaginary accounts of solidarity. We have looked for proposals that could take a palpable form or direction within the limited amount of six- to eight-week web residencies and the available financial and curatorial resources. We privileged continuity as an institutional and curatorial value to extend collaborations as well as to support projects that started or might outlive the Web Residencies. And lastly, we committed as a jury to work closely with all the residents in developing their proposals and fostering moments of communal encounter. While each project is very distinct, there are overlaps in approaches and interests, and we are hopeful at the outset of this series of residencies that these commonalities and differences will infuse the call with collective energy and imagination of what solidarity can mean and do in these times of change.The jury was made up of Anca Rujoiu (curator of the 16th call for Web Residencies), Radu Lesevschi (Arc Bucharest), and Thomas Dumke & Denise Helene Sumi (Digital Solitude program).
Web Residents
Digital Solidarity Platform for the Global SouthMore of Us | Syafiatudina / Yogyakarta, Indonesia | Carolina Campuzano / Medellín, Colombia | Lauren von Gogh / Johannesburg, South Africa | Erik Tlaseca / Mexico City, Mexico | Veronique Poverello / Lumbumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo | Rogelio Vazquez, Mexico City, Mexico | Teesa Bahana / Kampala, Uganda
Carolina Campuzano from Medellín, Lauren von Gogh from Johannesburg, Syafiatudina from Yogyakarta, Erik Tlaseca and Rogelio Vazquez from Mexico City, Veronique Poverello from Lumbumbashi, and Teesa Bahana from Kampala are More of Us. As a translocal ecosystem, More of Us currently works on developing an online platform to further engage with art practices and processes of social change, as well as work with a variety of communities to share the spirit of collective action.
Swarm
Distributed Cognition Cooperative | Sasha Shestakova / Moscow, Russia, and Anna Engelhardt / London, UK
Concerned with algorithmic and political infrastructure as a form of politics, DCC grounds its practice in writing, manufacturing, and maintaining digital architectures from a decolonial perspective. With developing the platform Swarm, a supportive peer-review environment to help marginalized artists, researchers, and other practitioners develop their portfolio or raise funds, DCC creates infrastructural conditions to break the vicious circle maintained by institutional politics.
Hunger, Inc.: Solidarity Through Meals
Elia Nurvista / Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Together with local communities and collectives, Indonesian artist and activist Elia Nurvista will create a »Solidarity kit,« a lexicon that consists of stories about and local recipes that can be made from ingredients that can be collected in the region around Yogyakarta or are affordable to obtain. By sharing this local knowledge, Nurvista relates to significant strategies for living in limited conditions, and methods to learn from each other.
Castle of Crossed Destinies: When the Sonic Becomes Physical
Aouefa Amoussuvi / Berlin, Germany | Sasha Engelman / London, UK | Olivia Berkowicz / Göteborg, Sweden
In a series of conversations on the practices and histories of tarot reading, amateur radio, and raw cacao, these modest devices and rituals became vehicles for untangling colonial processes, gendered notions of technology, and transgenerational memory. Through the Web Residency, Castle of Crossed Destinies will test new formats and aim to reach diverse audiences while building solidarity through analogue, digital, and political methodologies.
23 August – A Hyper/Text and Archival Work on Transnational Solidarity
Simina Neagu / London, UK
A forgotten episode of transnational solidarity recounted through archival materials and words of fiction. Taking a cue from the 23 August Stadium built for this event, Simina Neagu attempts to trace back a partly forgotten history and start a conversation on transnational solidarity between the Global South and the »Global East.« The festival, dedicated to anticolonial struggles, was attended by Caribbean political and cultural activists John la Rose and Irma la Rose (née Hilaire).
A Zero Hours Worker’s Fate
Simona Dumitriu and Ramona Dima / Malmö, Sweden
»Is there free will and can solidarity exist in precarious work conditions?« Sweden-based artist duo Simona Dumitru and Ramona Dima (a.k.a. Claude & Dersch) will tackle questions around precarious work conditions and fatal dependencies as a result of zero-hours contracts. During the residency, they aim to produce the written and filmed Document of Fates, followed by in situ meetings with the local union and migrant communities to further engage with and contribute to improved and solidarity-based working conditions for everyone.
Call Page @ Akademie Schloss Solitude
www.akademie-solitude.de
Webresidencies
Key visualisation by Stephan Thiel und Anne Lippert. Website by parmon.
The project is co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund of Romania (AFCN)
