OPEN CALL FOR LIAA MEMBERS TO APPLY TO WORK IN LIAA STUDIO January – February in 2024!

We invite LIAA members to apply to carry out creative activities in the studio located in the cultural complex SODAS 2123 in January – February in 2024!

The Festivity Residency. Open call for artists, researchers and other creatives from Nordic and Baltic regions

Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association invites artists, activists, and researchers in the fields of art and humanities, whose artistic practice includes exploring celebration as phenomenon, its various forms and elements, to a granted three months long residency programme in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The Festivity Residency focuses on the research and artistic interpretation of the celebration phenomenon. In this programme, the residency infrastructure is a space providing opportunities for investigation and interpretation on how traditions are binding communities together and how social infrastructures are created in relational processes.

During the residency the following questions are raised: What can festivals mean and offer in non-festive times? How can we celebrate in ethical, sustainable and sensitive manner? How can we celebrate to support each other, to strengthen our bonds of friendship and to discover multiple meanings in celebratory practices?

During the residency, participants are encouraged to make at least one open presentation of their work on the theme of the festival. Depending on the individual approach of the resident, this may include:

• An interpretation of a local calendar or community celebration. Investigating a particular celebration and taking a critical look at the established norms and traditions can bring broader community closer to joy that is the essence of celebration. Lithuania, and Vilnius in particular, is a land of many festivals, and the Rasos Colony, where the residency is located, has historically celebrated the Rasos (St John’s Day) festival every year. This historical and cultural context is important and adds underlying meaning to the residency programme.
• “Imported” celebrations. Participants are encouraged to bring their own personal, community and national celebrations and adapt them to the local context. This may allow local communities to celebrate unexperienced royal birthdays or initiation processes. In a broader context “imported” celebrations can question the boundaries between different traditions and societies while creating a productive symbiosis of customs.
• Missing ceremonies. During the residency, participants are given the opportunity to organize celebrations which for various reasons are missing in everyday life, e.g., LGBT wedding ceremonies, protest parties, therapeutic gatherings. Through these various hybrid and intersectional practices, together we will try to imagine what kind of celebrations can await us in the future, what kind of potential they have, and how we can preserve our customs of joy for tomorrow which often seems apocalyptic.

Festivity is a way to foster love in community, to protest joyfully and to draw the scenarios of future world that is more than just survival.

The residency program will take a space at SODAS 2123 cultural complex. It is a self-governing community-based space, operated and curated by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. It brings together creators and researchers from different fields whose practices are based on experimentation and development of unexpected formats.

Housing over 50 artists’ studios, rehearsal studios for bands, offices for design, film and visual arts organizations, exhibition spaces, event spaces, various workshops, a café, a public outdoor garden space, a public allotment and more, SODAS 2123 provides a multidisciplinary space for artistic and cultural practices. Every resident of the cultural complex is open to share their knowledge and craftsmanship.

After selection process, six artists will be invited to live and work focusing on their chosen festivities during the spring, summer and autumn residency periods.

Residency duration is 3 calendar months. Available residency periods:

• From the 1st of March to the 31st of May 2024
• From the 1st of June to the 31st of August 2024
• From the 1st of September to the 30th of November 2024

The residency grant is 2400 EUR per artist (tax inclusive). The residency also covers travel expenses to and from the residency up to 250 EUR.

Only artists from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia (as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland) are eligible to apply.

Residency is located in a repurposed school building about 15 minutes walk from Vilnius Old Town, in a calm and friendly neighbourhood called Rasų Kolonija. The residency provides individual rooms (28 m² individual room with kitchenette and bathroom, 27 m² and 19 m² individual rooms  with shared kitchen and bathroom) and the opportunity to work in a shared studio.

Please send a filled application form to residency@sodas2123.lt by December 20, 2023. If you have any questions, please contact the residency curator Indrė Liškauskaitė indre@letmekoo.lt

The Festivity residency is curated by Edvinas Grinkevičius, Monika Kalinauskaitė and Aušra Vismantaitė. This residency program is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture and is organised by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association.

Activities of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association are funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius municipality.

Visuals: Rasa Jančiauskaitė

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