Developed with Rachel Withers
Marinus van Reymerswaele, St. Jerome in his Study (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims, Reims, France/WikiArt © public domain)
Residency dates - 5 August – 6 September 2019
For Now that’s what I call an artist’s residency! art writer, Artforum contributor and PRAKSIS co-founder Rachel Withers invites applications from anyone who’d like to spend a month with PRAKSIS in Oslo, developing their art practice. Workers in any medium or art-oriented practice (criticism, art theory, art history) will be considered. She challenges you to send us the most ingenious, original and practical month-long work plan you can cook up.
Today, from Aarau to Zalaegerszeg, artists’ residencies proliferate. Websites such as TransArtists and ResArtis list thousands, from the lavishly resourced and wildly prestigious, to low-and-no-budget initiatives open to anyone with motivation, talent, and scope to step away from their job and/or family for a given period. Underlying this relatively untheorised phenomenon are numerous assumptions about how artists create and what they “give back” to the communities that host them. During the residency, Withers plans to inventory and reflect on those assumptions, as part of her investigation into the theory and practice of artists’ residencies.
Withers’s extremely open Open Call is designed to support her investigation. By loosening the residency application parameters, she looks forward to learning more about what artists (and art writers or researchers) really want from the experience. Artists’ residencies are usually viewed as a revitalising break from the continuum of “normal” practice – but do they deliver this in practice, and why is it so needed and wanted? What does it say about “normal” practice? Do deeper art-historical perspectives shed light on the concept and practice of residencies? What other research methods – economic, sociological, philosophical – might support the enquiry?
Successful applicants will become part of a small, close-knit community for the residency period, engaging in discussions and other collective activities to be decided by the group: these might include visits to local sites or organisations, or other strategies – Withers looks forward to hearing. There will be opportunities to brainstorm your project and your wider practice 1-to-1 with Withers and the PRAKSIS team. Wherever practical, she and PRAKSIS will support you with your project’s logistics. This might be by brokering introductions in the Oslo area, or helping negotiate access to specific facilities you may need.
As the residency process unfolds, Withers will invite participants to share reflections on the process and discuss their views on, and experiences of, residencies as a phenomenon.
