Four workshops by international artists and curators will be complemented by evening presentations. A full-day workshop will be led by curator Joanna Warsza with artist Kristina Norman, and three half-day workshops will be led by curator Candice Hopkins, as well as two artists in residence: Eglė Budvytytė and Elin Már Øyen Vister. In the evenings and the tutors will present their work to the workshop participants.

Not only is the name of Nida derived from the Old Prussian word for ‘fluent’, but the settlement itself was moved several times throughout the history to escape the constant threat of the sand drifts. The Couronian Spit is, geologically speaking, an ephemeral coast element with highest drifting sand dunes in Europe, and similarly, the nearby political border was redrawn over the centuries. Therefore, Nida is an ideal place to convene to think together about questions of continuity and disruption, survival and extinction, trauma and healing, colonisation and resistance, and settlement and displacement in relation to art’s role in society. Local histories and struggles will serve as departure points for conversations and practices bridging the pressing issues of today near and far, and considering when to surrender to inhabiting a floating space full of slippages and when to make a stand.

PROGRAMME

9 October, Wed

Arrivals to Nida Art Colony 
18.00 Welcoming
19.00 Dinner
20:00 Presentation by Kristina Norman & Joanna Warsza

10 October, Thu

8.00–9.00 Breakfast
9:00-18:00 Workshop by Kristina Norman + Joanna Warsza in Rybachy (Russia): Ornithological Station, Seagull Pond, Soviet Soldiers Memorial, Orthodox Church. Lunch in Rybachy included, followed by a reading group and discussions with coffee and tea.
19.00 Dinner
20.00 Informal reflections on the trip + film screening

11 October, Fri

8.00–9.00 Breakfast
10:00-12:00 Workshop by Candice Hopkins
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-15:00 Workshop by Candice Hopkins
15.00 Coffee/Tea
16.00–18.00 Sensory walk with Eglė Budvytytė and Elin Már Øyen Vister (outdoors)
18.00 Resting
19.00 Dinner 
20.00 Presentation by Candice Hopkins

12 October, Sat

8.00–9.00 Breakfast
10:00-13:00 Workshop by Eglė Budvytytė
13.00 Lunch
14.00–17.00 Workshop by Elin Már Øyen Vister (outdoors)
17.00 Coffee/Tea
18.00–19.00 Reflections
20.00 Farewell Party

13 October, Sun

8.00–9.00 Breakfast
9:00-onwards Free programme and departures

Embarking on Border-Crossing from Nida to Rybachy (and back)
Workshop by artist Kristina Norman and curator Joanna Warsza

In the recent years the EU citizens have enjoyed the disappearance of border controls, while the EU itself have made its external frontiers more and more impenetrable. The Curonian Spit is perhaps one of the most curious examples of border making and border crossing in Europe, where borders are literally drawn on sand. Originally, in the 17th century, the settlement of Nida was located in what is now Kaliningrad Oblast, changing its location on a few occasions, just like many other villages, due to the movement of the sand dunes. In the last few years this check point (established in 1920 and again in 1991 upon dissolution of the USSR) was impassable without a heavy visa paperwork. Yet since a few months it became more porous again by introduction of free e-visa procedure.

The workshop will take form of a collective border-crossing practice by public transport. We will travel from one dune to another, from the Lithuanian Sahara on one side to a biological station on the other, from the EU to the Russian Federation, or just as the school kids from Nida in the 50s on a school trip to remains of East Prussia. The participants are invited to bring with them a textual or visual reference contextualising the act of border crossing and the experience of migration. Together, in small groups, we will construct a common reading and visual references on the current politics of borders and migration affecting people, but also other species, such as birds, or inorganic grains of sand blown across the border.

Practical note: The participants are asked to wear suitable clothes for both indoors and outdoors activities including possible rain, and to secure free e-visa for visiting the Kaliningrad Region.

Listening and Sensing as an Artistic Practice and Method 
Workshop by artist Elin Mar Øyen Vister

During the workshop we will contemplate, listen/sense/feel and discuss together what a non-hierarchical listening methodology or listening artistic practice could be like. We will take a sensory walk in the surrounding landscape where we will do one or more deep listening meditations along the way. Listening is a fundamentally relational act and it is also a therapeutical and potentially transformational act. We will talk about listening to ourselves and our bodies, to each other, to our communities (human and non-human) and to the environment.  We will talk about listening and sensing as care and as a tool of paying attention to the past, the present, and beyond the Western construction of linear time. Before we begin the sound-walk I would like to introduce a few listeners such as the American composer Pauline Oliveros and her “deep listening” practice, as well as the indigenous listening poetics of the Sámi artist-poet-musician-philosopher Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.

Practical note: Please turn off your phones and wear comfortable warm clothes for outdoors.

The Pleasure of Being Dragged
Workshop by artist Eglė Budvytytė

During the workshop we will explore the ideas of passage, care and attention through the lenses of somatic practices. In the first part of the workshop I will share some guided sessions around bodywork, focused on witnessing, listening, observing and touch. The second part of the workshop will comprise a dragging practice (a practice derived from the performance Some were carried, some – dragged behind, 2015.) The aim is to practice a sense of gravity, trust, and care and try out different perspectives and angles (non-vertical) of looking at the word. We will practice dragging as a gentle and slow gesture, and try out multiple ways how the body can be dragged without hurting it and causing discomfort. We will explore the pleasure of being dragged. We will also employ the act of dragging as a way to move and be moved through space, to traverse different surfaces, (possibly both indoors and outdoors) with a different sense of agency.

Practical note: Wear comfortable clothes (that can be trashed), few layers preferably.

WORKSHOP LEADERS

Kristina Norman a Tallinn-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice includes video installations, sculptural objects, urban interventions, as well as documentary films and performances.
Norman’s work is devoted to the exploration of the political potential that contemporary art offers in dealing with the issues of human rights and the politics of memory. As part of her academic research on memory and human rights in contemporary art, Norman produced projects involving site-specific video installations and public interventions, focussing mainly on the use of narrative memories of the protagonists. In these works, the artist explores the ethical dimension of juxtaposing of different historical and geographical contexts and draws attention to the transnational nature of memory in the age of mass migrations. Norman participated in, among others, Manifesta Biennial in St.Petersburg (2014), Aichi Triennale of Japan (2013), Venice Biennial (2009), Baltic Triennial in Vilnius (2009), and Berlin Biennial (2008).

Joanna Warsza is a curatorand writer specialised in public art and extended public programming, social and political agendas, interested in all forms of art outside of the white cube.
Since 2014 she is the head of the curatorial program Curator Lab at Konstfack University in Stockholm. She was an artistic director of Public Art Munich (2016-2018), and curated among others the Public Program of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg (2014), the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and she was associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012) on the invitation of Artur Żmijewski. Warsza edited of number of publications such as Stadium X - A Place That Never Was (2009); Forget Fear (2012), I Can’t Work Like This. A reader on Boycott in Contemporary Art (2017) and A City Curating Reader (2018). Originally from Warsaw, she lives in Berlin.

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer originally from Whitehorse, Yukon. She is Senior Curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). She was co-curator of the SITE Santa Fe biennial Casa Tomada (2018); a part of the curatorial team for documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany (2017) and a co-curator of the major exhibitions Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art (2013); Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years (2011), and the 2014 SITElines biennial Unsettled Landscapes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her recent essays and presentations include Outlawed Social Life for South as a State of Mindand Sounding the Margins: A Choir of Minor Voices at Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway.
She has lectured internationally including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dak’Art Biennale, Artists Space, Tate Britain and the University of British Columbia. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art.She is acitizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation.

Elin Már Øyen Vister is an artist, composer, and forager based in Røst, Norway. With a broad background in audio and music, as a DJ and producer, and in field recording and radio, they bring an interdisciplinary approach and experience of a multitude of practices to their expression.
Már is occupied with listening as artistic practice and as a way to compose, sense, and experience the world, much inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s ‘deep listening’ philosophy. Már’s work strives to break with Western patriarchal hegemonic narratives that have placed the human being in the centre and instead focuses on the landscape’s innate stories and knowledge, influenced by indigenous methodologies and indebted to and informed by queer, multicultural, and pluriversal understandings of life and the cosmos. Their ongoing long-term projects include Soundscape Røst and Deconstructing Norwegian-ness. They co-run Røst Artist in Residence, an artist-run workshop, and AIR project, at Skomvær Fyr in Røst.

Eglė Budvytytė is an artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She graduated from Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2008, and since then has been working at the intersection between performing and visual arts.
Budvytytė makes videos and performances to explore the relationships between body, public spaces and audience. She looks at the body as a site where different powers operate, and approaches movement/gesture as technology for a possible subversion of normativity, gender and social roles. Her work was shown, amongst others, at 13th Baltic Triennial, Riga (2018); Lofoten International Art Festival (2017); Block Universe, London (2017); Art Dubai commissions (2017); CAC, Vilnius (2016); Liste, Art Basel (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); De Appel Arts Centre (2013); and Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam (2013). She was resident at Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012) and at Wiels Contemporary art centre, Brussels (2013).

Rado Ištok is a curator, researcher and editor from Slovakia based in Stockholm. He is a curator of art residencies, workshop and an exhibition at the VAA Nida Art Colony (2018-2020) in the framework of 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, and a project leader of Spaces of Care, Disobedience and Desire (2018-2020), a research project in collaboration with Marie-Louise Richards and Natália Rebelo, supported by the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Recent exhibitions include Liquid Horizons (2019) in Bratislava, Slovakia; Other Visions (2018) in Olomouc, the Czech Republic; and I’m fine, on my way home now (2017) in Stockholm, Sweden. He worked as an assistant curator for the exhibition Positions #3 (2016) at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Editorial work includes Decolonising Archives (2016) for L’Internationale Online, Queer Scandinavia (2015) for A2, and the forthcoming publication Crating the World (2019) coedited with Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn.