Sommerakademie Paul Klee: Call for applications 2023/24

Up to eight residents are invited to join the Sommerakademie Paul Klee (SPK) programme, curated by cultural worker Andrea Thal, and beginning on 12 August 2023. Over the course of 2023 & 2024, the SPK features public lectures, closed-door seminars, and access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and technical support at the Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB) – but also teaching opportunities at the HKB.

Travel, accommodation, visa expenses and a per diem of CHF 50 are covered. Residents using production facilities are entitled to a modest production stipend of CHF 500. Each year of the cycle also has a pot of money at their disposal that can be allocated collectively.

The Curatorial Framework 2023/24: Finding our Feet
This recurring fragility and crisis make it more necessary than ever to form strong bonds with others, to situate oneself in and act from a sense of community. At the same time, the awareness for the complexities of care and for the highly sensitive methodologies required to create meaningful ways of being with others has grown significantly in recent years.

The 2023/24 cycle of the SPK wishes to bring together a group of residents who have experience in working with others in modes of crisis or struggle in cultural, activist or education contexts. To find our feet means to grow more confident in a new or shifting situation, to grow familiar with the ground we are standing on and from where we act. Finding our feet will dedicate time to detailed research of methodologies and economies of collective working practices, the reflection and awareness tools that grow out of groups whose practices imagine different forms of relating to each other, as well as artistic and experimental ways of making art together. Based on the awareness that such practices are always highly specific to their contexts, the programme hopes to build its field of resonance together with the residents and based on their questions. In light of this, the programme proposes a loose structure with room for decisions to be taken in the group and is able to accommodate shifts in its focus and direction.

Please see our website for Andrea Thal’s full curatorial framework, the timeline, the requirements and the link to upload your application.