A curated residency “Taking Time” has started in Nida Art Colony

: Published on Sunday, 21 October 2012 15:33

Between October and December the residency / exhibition project "Taking Time" is taking place in Nida Art Colony; a curatorial project proposing to focus on what happens within the time and spatial frame of an artistic residency, based around themes surrounding "On Hosting and Displacing”. Working with a group of artists from Eastern and Western Europe, curators Federica Martini and Petra Koehle (Switzerland) are using an experimental curatorial format - Petra Koehle (CH) working with the artists for the first 10 days of the project and Federica Martini arriving towards the end of the residency to finalise the curation of the works, ready for the exhibition in the Gallery “Akademija” of Vinius Academy of Arts in December. The artists are currently sharing ideas, experiences and references to build around themes of the project collaboratively.

Artists participating in the project:

Fiona Reilly (Ireland), Peter Wehinger (AT), Marika Troili (SE), Vahag Hamalbashyan (Armenia), Myroslav Vayda (Ukraine), Natalia Zintsova (RU), Marta Bogdanska (PL) and Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky (CH/NL). Our other resident artists arriving in November might also join the project.

Artists from the East were selected with the help of our partner institutions.

This is the first programme of the bigger cooperation project between Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts (NAC/VDA) and Fondation Chateau Mercier (FCM) and Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais (ECAV) in Sierre (small town in the Alps in Switzerland), that are located in remote areas and explore alternative models of cultural production, based on a combination of artistic residencies, active exhibition centres and artistic educational programs.

The aim of the project is to share experiences between two institutions, Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts (NAC/VDA) and Fondation Chateau Mercier (FCM) et Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais (ECAV) à Sierre, that are located in remote areas and explore alternative models of cultural production, based on a combination of artistic residencies, active exhibition centres and artistic educational programs.

Both partners are located in picturesque areas that are attractive for tourists on the one hand, and inspiring for artists and their community on the other.

Through the collaboration between NAC/VDA and ECAV, “On Hosting and Displacing…” will focus on the specificity of remote, picturesque contexts dominated by landscapes (both rural or alpine/marine) that are being “regenerated” today through touristic and cultural policies, and will question critical models for artistic intervention in such environments.

The subject of hosting and producing culture in remote, alternative places will be approached both intensively (artistic residencies, short events like a symposium and workshop-based exhibitions) and extensively (long research periods carried out during art and research residencies).

We are thankful for our partners who provided grants for the most of curators and artists. Project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Ministry of Culture of Lithuanian Republic, Nordic-Baltic mobility programme for culture.

KEYWORDS: hosting, remoteness, networked retreat, centres in peripheries, site-specificity, itinerant colonies, cultural production and cultural nomadism, translation, artistic research and exhibition making, production-oriented exhibition spaces, post-romantic, education - mountains & learning breeze, active learning in an art & nature community, artistic PhD as a residency, intercultural artistic and social communication, critical tourism.

SHORT BIOS OF CURATORS

Federica Martini, PhD, is an art historian and curator. She was a member of the Curatorial Departments of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli-Turin, Musée Jenisch Vevey and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts/Lausanne, and curator of the visual art section of the Festival des Urbaines, Lausanne.

Since 2009 she is head of the Master program MAPS - Arts in Public Spheres at ECAV, Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais, Sierre.

Her curatorial practice, often developed in collaboration, explore diverse exhibition formats and “out of the cube” situations, such as ethnographic or historic museums, online archives, atomic shelters, gardens, fanzines/editions.

Recent exhibitions include Outsourcing (edition, 2009); The Reading Sculpture (edition, 2009); Double Exposure (Conches – Musée d’ethnographie, Genève, 2010); Slipping Glimpser (Théatre Arsenic, atomic shelters, Lausanne, 2011); Incongruous (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts/Lausanne, 2011); What is a Fact? (Musée historique, Yverdon-les-Bains, 2012); Vague Terrain – 0° latitude-longitude Gleisdreieck (Complices, Berlin, 2012). She is currently working with Didier Rittener on the project Royal Garden 4 – Rivières (Le Crédac – Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry).

Recent publications: Just Another Exhibition: Stories and Politics of Biennials (Postmedia Books, Milano, 2011) and Marco Fedele di Catrano – Unbearable dissertation on a broken line (cura, Roma, 2011), and several articles on exhibiting national identities.

Petra Koehle has studied photography, theory and fine art at the Zurich University of the Arts and at Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London.

Since 2003 she works collaboratively with Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin. They developed a performative Setting to understand the probability of a chance meeting, managed a Guesthouse in Sihanoukville and activated Archive material by reenacting some of its documents. In order to understand the present they connect their own existence with other spaces and different times. Koehle/Vermot's latest works and researches are investigating how technologies and more specifically the medium of photography relates to the process of archiving and how its mechanisms of selection it imposes certain rules. Collaborations with other people as well as organizing exhibitions, discussions and performances are consistently part of their work and a strategy to intervene cultural politics.

Petra Koehles work was honored with a Werkbeitrag of the City and the Canton of Zürich, the UBS Culture Foundation and the Kiefer Hablitzel Award. Studio awards in the Swiss Institute in Rome and the Cité internationale des Arts de Paris. Exhibitions in Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt, Kunsthaus Glarus, Shedhalle Zurich and at the Sinop Biennial in Turkey. Presentations and performances at Kunsthalle Baselland in Basle, Piano Nobile in Geneva and during Printed Matter in PS1 in New York. She published several artist books in the edition fink such as There where I should have been yesterday. I am here today and Pour les Oiseaux. Petra Köhle has curated performance evenings and exhibitions at the Cité internationale des Arts de Paris and the Swiss Institute in Rome. Currently she is doing her Phd at the University of the Art in Linz and works as guest lecturer at Berne University of the Arts and as assistant a Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valais.