Barbara Kapusta (AT)(born 1983) is concerned with verbal and non-verbal language and the communication between persons and things. Her work explores the relationship between the material character of objects and the physical existence of theobserver.

Her objects, films and text-based works have recently been shown at, among others, The Promise of Total Automation, Kunsthalle Wien, 2016; fig-2, ICA Studio, London and Poesie, mumok Vienna, 2015 as well as in the solo show They She We Them at 21er Haus, Belvedere Wien 2013. She regularly publishes her poetic writing, most recently in Black Pages (Issue#68) and J.Tischer: Pin, edited by Manuela Ammer, 2014, Sternberg Press and is co-editor of several publications including the catalogue Dinge und Dialoge, 2016, Vienna/Berlin. She currently lives and works in Vienna.

During my residency at Nida Art Colony I will work on two new sets of objects and texts, revolving around the idea of brokenness. One deals with sites of brokenness being potentially ones enabling new profiles of being and new forms of integration to occur. What develops from brokenness, how do bits and pieces of material form new ensembles? Consequently I work on a long text of prose starting from a point beyond brokenness, everything has already happened. I think about extension, re-enactment, play and simulation. Bodies with their functions restored, enhanced. The story is about power and protest. It is a play with surfaces and skins, interfaces and bodies, sexes and gender. The community of protagonists: super sensitized, abilities improved: smell and taste, movement, camouflage, elasticity. The bodies: partly organic, partly synthetic, partly imagined.

Natalie Sanders (UK): I make sculpture; compositions from found objects / materials. Materials include 2D, 3D, video, audio and performance, but are treated as a single medium. Works are both visual and conceptual, using abstract shape and colour, form, composition and the objecthood; the nature, contexts and symbolisms, of the materials / objects. My practice is based in an observational process of collecting and capturing. I carry an image/video camera with me at all times. Treatment is led by the object/material and could be; distorted, displaced, re-placed, repeated, animated, combined, situated, constructed with, re-structured. A lo-fi / DIY nature affects a temporary / assembled quality. Works /installations have a constructed spontaneity; often requiring a precision of edit to create an appearance of an automatic / immediate gesture. There are often places set for the viewer. Or leads to participation / choreographed movement.

Themes: Contemporary lifestyle, culture and communication.

Influences: Mass media, film, fiction, objects as artefacts of contemporary living. I often take as material YouTube footage, advertising media, discarded objects / possessions.

A practice led research project investigating art works which actively connect with the environment which they inhabit and function as an interface between animate and inanimate i.e. the human viewer and the environment. The project will consist of a body of research, recorded in a blog and practice based experiments leading to the development of a new art work or body of art works informed by that research. The location of NAC within a nature reserve makes it an ideal site to carry out this project. The transitional nature of the land–sea setting and the transitory nature of the dunes add exciting opportunities for experimentation with interfaces. The starting point for the research will be the book “Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things” by Jane Bennett.

Andrius Mulokas (LT) is a performance artist who works with dance and choreography. After studying visual arts (Kaunas College) and architecture (Vilnius Art Academy) his artistic interest shifted to space in relation to the moving body. Andrius moved to Amsterdam where he was invited to the BA in Choreography program (SNDO) of the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK). Born in 1983 in Kaunas, Lithuania, currently lives in Amsterdam while working with the artistic scene there and abroad.

“What I’ll be working on during my residency, both in videos and live performances, is not so much a proposal of a form but a way to enter into contact with various categories of matter. Nida Art Colony seems to be a suitable climate for my research with found materials which has been modified along the use of other artists. The idea of repurposing out-listed objects triggers my phantasy to set up physical actions that would be displayed publicly. I take an object and start manipulating it, until it gives up its origin and exits its obvious nature to reveal its extended possibilities. In this aspect I see myself as a living matter that is searching for a physical match in revitalised matter. Through exercising live actions I look for ways to reveal the full physical consequence of the material.”