Group Residency PLACE, PEOPLE and TIME: PUBLISHING AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE

The one-week residency will take place in Collemacchia, in Italy’s Molise region, home to The Museum of Loss and Renewal.

The residency dates are: 23 – 29 July 2022.
The deadline for applications is 14 March 2022 (midnight CET).

This Group Residency has been devised by The Museum of Loss and Renewal in partnership with Amsterdam-based The Future / The Future Publishing and Printing. It is offered for creative practitioners working with printed matter and publishing as an artistic practice and for those who have a strong interest in this area.

9 places are available on this residency. The minimum number of participants is 6.

Focal points of the residency

– Immersive experience
– Publishing as an artistic practice
– Independent publishing: possibilities and limitations
– Collective knowledge
– Materiality and form
– Individual practice
– The book as a platform for encounters
– Redefining the framework: from book to publishing
– The art book versus the artist’s book
– Natural environment of exceptional significance
– Published outcome (digital)
– Outcome presented internationally

APPROACH

The group residency will provide a partially-structured and hands-on programme to enable residents to develop their skills, and understanding of artists’ publications and publishing. The residency experience is designed to stimulate new ways of thinking and experimentation through production, research, learning and presentation. Residents will work collectively and individually.

The residency is devised around the idea of the book as a platform for creative encounters. By listening, looking and making residents will investigate image, text, typography, object and context relationships. In addition to each resident’s individual work, there will be a final outcome in the form of a collective digital publication that will be published by The Museum of Loss and Renewal and presented at international events. The publication produced from the 2019 residency was launched at the Printing Plant Art Book Fair in Amsterdam.

The aim of this residency is to provide a supportive and stimulating environment to develop your production skills and knowledge of artists’ publications, printed matter and publishing as an artistic practice. Alongside individual practice, the residency will have a focus on knowledge exchange, creating opportunities to learn from each other.

A series of group sessions supported by specific learning models will enable you, without hierarchies, to explore your own practice and the residency theme ‘publishing as an artistic practice’. 

‘(Semi)Public Confessions of Guilty Pleasures’ will ask ‘what is your relationship to books and publishing?’, ‘Narrating the work of others’ will explore medium versus message, and ’24 hour book’ will enable the creation of a book from concept to physical object.

‘Visual Dialogue’ and ‘Slow Looking’ will focus on attention to detail. An underlying theme of ‘Micro-Macro’ will connect the group to the residency location and to the wider world, in consideration of what one brings from a place and what is subsequently left in a place. Sessions will be facilitated by Vincent Schipper (Studio The Future / The Future Publishing & Printing) and Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen (artists, educators and curators of The Museum of Loss and Renewal; residents of Collemacchia) who will provide practical and theoretical mentoring. The residency will have an offline engagement with an international relevant expert / like-minded initiative that will provide bespoke content, expanding the residency in time and space.

You will explore various approaches to publishing as an artistic practice from historical and contemporary perspectives. By presenting and discussing key subjects such as analogue-digital relationships, platforms available to independent-publishers, small presses, artists’ groups and collectives we aim to facilitate an ongoing creative dialogue between making and discussing while immersed in the stunning environment of Collemacchia’s mountain landscape itself.

Opportunities for participants to share work in progress will happen throughout the residency, enabling conversations and peer support. Surrounding this loose structure, there will be time to develop your own work and to experience the local environment.

LOCATION

The residency is located in Collemacchia, a small village within Italy’s National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, a protected area of exceptional significance and beauty. Engagement with the natural world begins on the doorstep and the mountainous landscape offers an excellent environment for reflective practice. The ancient, undisturbed and extensive terrain holds a rich and complex history visible in the area’s architecture, customs, agricultural lands and forests.

The area is sparsely populated by villages that are largely trilingual Italian-French-English due to the large community of emigrants who continually move between European nations, stemming from economic migration dating from approx. 1850. The village has been home to Tracy Mackenna’s family for centuries and the curators of The Museum of Loss and Renewal foster strong links with the local community which is highly supportive of the Residency Programme.

FACILITIES

Live/work accommodation includes two fully furnished houses consisting of multiple bedrooms, desk space, studio space, central heating and internet.

FACILITATORS

The residency will be led by Vincent Schipper and Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen.

Vincent Schipper is co-founder of Studio The Future / The Future Publishing and Printing. Studio The Future is an experiment-focused and independent publisher based in Amsterdam. It was founded in 2013 by Vincent Schipper and Klara van Duijkeren, each of whom has a broad background in architecture, urbanism and artistic research. Their purpose is to give small and/or experimental ideas that could have a large impact, an opportunity to communicate through the print medium. Breaking away from the current idea of publishing and returning it to the more classical meaning of ‘making ideas public’, they create space and possibilities for a range of alternatives to emerge and enter our everyday discourse. By initiating, collaborating and co-creating, The Future publishes ideas through installations, exhibitions, research, artist residencies and events which inevitably lead to printed matter – books, magazines, pamphlets and such like. Though based in Amsterdam, they collaborate and distribute internationally.
Studio The Future / The Future Publishing and Printing

Tracy Mackenna (Prof Emerita; SCO-IT) & Edwin Janssen (Dr; NL) are the founders and co-curators of The Museum of Loss and Renewal. Their collaborative art practice is a creative and discursive site where production, presentation, exchange, co-learning and research meet. Publishing is a core component of their artistic practice. The Museum of Loss and Renewal’s key areas of focus are social relationships, the way places are inhabited and how personal objects reflect who we are. Tracy and Edwin work with international partners to devise and present multifaceted exhibition projects that address issues of societal concern such as well-being, ageing, end of life and sustainability. Tracy and Edwin are highly experienced, award winning educators who have devised and lead multiple group learning projects situated within the international museum and gallery sector, and higher education.

RESIDENCY FEE

The Residency Programme is operated on a non- commercial cost covering basis, and is financially supported by The Museum of Loss and Renewal in order to keep fees low. The residency fee is €1100 (Euro), to be paid by the resident. The fee includes accommodation in a variety of spacious rooms with full board (3 meals each day). Ingredients are mainly locally sourced and meals are prepared by our excellent cook, Alessandra. Special diets can be catered for.

A deposit of €400 (Euro) will be required within three weeks of accepting a place on the residency. The remaining balance of €700 (Euro) is payable six weeks in advance of the residency start date.

You will be responsible for funding and organising your own travel, your own insurances and any visa requirements particular to your country of origin. Detailed travel information will be supplied (closest airports Naples, Rome), and collection/drop-off at a local train station will be arranged.

We do not have external funding for this project, so regret that we are unable to offer assistance with fees, flights, production costs or other subsistence. Typically, successful applicants source funding by applying to their national arts funding bodies, personal fundraising, or through academic institutional support. Formal letters of invitation can be provided to assist in this process.