from here now. encounters on artistic residencies

Madrid, Barcelona

Encounters prompted by hablarenarte - idensitat - La Escocesa

Who goes through a residency and what really happens during that context of 'reflection and immersion'? Who has access to residency programs and what limitations are there to be part of them? How can we build real inclusive programs that address these limitations? What are the conditions needed to put into practice all the theories we have shared and debated in recent years? And finally, who accompanies the people behind these programs and what working conditions do we propose to be able to develop the work properly?

These are some of the questions that we ask ourselves and lead us to come together now and from here. From these situated practices and reflections, and through two initial encounters, we invite artists, researchers and cultural workers to think with us (the three partner organizations) and shape what is to come.

Residences have become rites of passage, initiatory experiences and almost unavoidable requirements for artists professionalization. It is time we ask ourselves how, from its conceptualization and accompaniment, we can work to make them accessible, sustainable and politically active infrastructures in a context of such social and environmental complexity.

The meetings seek to generate spaces of listening, affection and mutual support among all the guests, to involve us in rethinking the functioning of residencies and to practice other ways of making them work (from management, caring, coexistence and situated research). These reflections and processes are reflected through the generation of texts or other documents that serve to share experiences, doubts, good practices, etc., reviewing the existing bibliography and/or expanding it. The objective is not only to generate a transversal knowledge, but also to put it into practice in our programs and to track these transformation processes.

During this first meeting, we started from five working tables organized by themes and dynamized by people who work from and through the proposed issues. Each table has a live report and visual documentation. The questions we start from are:

Are artistic residencies capacitive spaces? why?; How can we make artist residencies compatible with parenting and other family or emotional responsibilities? How can we create structures and initiatives to facilitate the mobility of people who have legal difficulties when crossing borders? What conflicts -visible or invisible- exist so that different bodies and identities participate on equal terms in residency programs? How and from where should these nodes of conflict be addressed and unblocked? How do we address the contradiction of fostering mobility and internalization in a world undergoing ecological collapse?

The hosts of the tables are: Júlia Ayerbe, Paloma Calle, Ana Bibang, Jo Muñoz and Ane Rodríguez Armendáriz. The reporters in charge are: Emma Brasó, Roser Colomar, Alba Feito, and Flavia Introzzi.

The participants are: Christian Fernández Mirón, Ivan Cicchetti, Carlos Almela, Alba Colomo, Gema Sanz, Mamen Adeva, Irati Irulegi, Julio Jara, Lenka Holikova, Marcela Rodríguez, Mercedes Álvarez, Sara Martín Terceño, Viviana Checchia, María Mallol and José Ramón Hernández.

The second meeting takes place in Cal Gras (Avinyó, Barcelona) at the end of November and focuses on the artist accompaniment and the work that we do who organize, coordinate and make possible residency programs. We think about both the processes and the conditions that have to be in order for these processes to occur.

These meetings have been partly possible thanks to the support of the subsidy for independent spaces of contemporary creation from the Madrid City Council in the 2022-2023 call and the aid to cultural entities from the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Regional Goverment of Madrid.