Group Residency PLACE, PEOPLE AND TIME: DRAWING INTO BEING

The Museum of Loss and Renewal is very pleased to welcome applications for the Group Residency PLACE, PEOPLE AND TIME: DRAWING INTO BEING.

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

The residency dates are 01 – 07 July 2022.
The deadline for applications is 07 March 2022 (midnight CET).

This Goup Residency has been devised by The Museum of Loss and Renewal in partnership with artist and academic Danica Maier. It is offered for creative practitioners working in art, animation, architecture, communication industries, design, fashion, film, theatre, performance and for those who have a strong interest in drawing as an area of practice. Applications from other fields where drawing is used as a means to develop, document, explore, explain, interrogate and plan such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, sport and writing are welcomed.

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

Focal points of the residency

– Immersive experience
– Drawing
– Technologies
– Interdisciplinarity
– Co-learning
– Individual practice
– Collective platform for encounters
– Experimentation
– Transcription
– Location specific
– Site sensitive
– 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 drawing across a range of technologies. The residency experience is designed to stimulate new ways of thinking and experimentation through production, research, co-learning and presentation. Residents will work collectively and individually.

The residency is devised around the idea of ‘place, people and time’ and the programme will be situated in and around the village of Collemacchia, Molise, Italy. By walking, listening, looking and making an interdisciplinary group of residents will activate drawing, a sophisticated means of thinking and communicating, to investigate a site. The location contains a cluster of contemporary villages, residing amidst Samnite and Roman settlements, all accessible by foot. 

In addition to each resident’s individual work, there will be a final collective digital outcome that will be published by The Museum of Loss and Renewal and presented internationally.

The aim of this residency is to affirm the value of drawing and enable the visualisation and development of perceptions and ideas in a supportive and stimulating environment in which to develop your skills and knowledge of drawing. Drawing remains a core activity in the work of creative practitioners, as an exploratory tool that guides visual discovery. You will explore various approaches to drawing, from historical to contemporary, analogue to digital. The necessity to understand the world through visual means is increasingly acute, and images surpass the boundaries of language and enhance communications in an increasingly globalised world.

Alongside individual practice, the residency will have a focus on co-learning and 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 assertion that drawing underpins systems and principles of visual language. ‘Visual Dialogue’, ‘Slow Looking’ and ‘Listening Environment’ 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.

Value will be given to the individual knowledge and experience of each resident, exploring the act of drawing as a fundamental means to analyse, document, record and translate the worlds we inhabit.

The Residency Programme will be facilitated by Danica Maier (artist and academic) and Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen (artists, educators and curators of The Museum of Loss and Renewal; residents of Collemacchia) who will deliver the programme and provide practical and theoretical mentoring. The residency will have an online engagement with an international relevant expert / like-minded initiative that will provide bespoke content, expanding the residency in time and space. 

By presenting and discussing key subjects such as experimentation (focused, and embracing possibilities of failure), analogue-digital relationships, methods and approaches for investigating site, and modes of public presentation, we aim to facilitate an ongoing creative dialogue between making and being whilst immersed in and experiencing the stunning environment of Collemacchia’s mountain landscape.

Opportunities for participants to share work in progress will happen throughout the residency, enabling conversation, exchange 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 Italian 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 spaces, central heating and internet.

FACILITATORS

The residency will be lead by Danica Maier and Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen.

Danica Maier is an American artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University (UK). Her research interests are in the un-repeating-repeat and the glitch and line, using subtle slippages and moments of detail to transgress propriety. Her work takes the form of drawing, installation, sound, music and 3D assemblages. Exploring dualities of material and site she explores ideas of expectations, traditional values and labour. Her publication Grafting Propriety: From Stitch to the Drawn Line was published by Black Dog Publishing Ltd (2016). She co-leads the No Telos research project which seeks to explore the journey of artistic process rather than that of outcome. Experience includes founder and coordinator of the artist residency programme Summer Lodge; workshop coordinator and tutor at London Printworks Trust and studio assistant at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. 
Danica Maier, Academic
Danica Maier, Artist and Academic

Tracy Mackenna (Professor 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. Drawing is a core component of their artistic practice in the form of artworks, communication modes, and explored in book and journal chapters. 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 & Edwin work with international partners to devise and present multifaceted exhibition projects that address issues of societal concern such as well-being, aging, 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.