Held - Experiments in Touch

Developed with Touch Praxis collaborators Nina Sarnelle and Selwa Sweidan. Convened in collaboration with Praxis Oslo.

Residency 24, Held, invites a multidisciplinary group of artists and others to explore touch as a creative medium.

The residency offers up to five Oslo-based artists and one international resident the opportunity to work for three weeks together with Sweidan and Sarnelle on collective research and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Sarnelle and Sweidan’s work is informed by participatory, decolonial methodologies in which ‘every body’ is engaged in processes of making and knowing. Guided by thinkers such as Karen Barad, Édouard Glissant, Petra Kuppers, Erin Manning, Hortense Spillers, and Hypatia Vourloumis, Sweidan and Sarnelle use touch to feel their way through complex issues of consent, inclusion, power, entanglement, and otherness. The residency aims to bring together a diverse group of practitioners who engage with fields such as multisensorial spectatorship, environmental toxicities, queer theory, racial & disability justice, or practices of collectivity/consent. 

This intensive residency offers participants scope to develop both group and solo work. The group will collectively plan a schedule at the residency’s outset, including daily group meetings and activities (such as discussions, rehearsals, visits to relevant spaces in Oslo, networking events, communal meals and leisure outings) alongside unstructured time for independent reflection and research. In the first week, residents will participate in PRAKSIS’s customary “Meet the Residents” event, informally introducing themselves to the rest of the group and the Oslo arts community.

What the Residency Provides

• An active, facilitated programme connected with the residency topic.
• A communal work space at PRAKSIS, in the center of Oslo.
• 3000 NOK for one international artist. 
• Comfortable accommodation for 1 international artist, sharing a flat with Nina Sarnelle and Selwa Sweidan. Oslo-based residents will continue to stay at their local address.

• Two group dinners with invited guests and simple lunches on weekdays held at PRAKSIS HQ.