IS.LAND

Promoted and developed by
BJCEM
Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean
with
Procida Capitale Italiana della Cultura 2022

OPEN CALL
IS.LAND
Intensive Residency Program in Procida
12th – 26th September 2022

in the frame of
The Tending of the Otherwise
curated by Simone Frangi and Alessandro Castiglioni

Open to artists under 35 from the Mediterranean area
Deadline July 22nd 2022
10 pm (CEST)

1 – STRUCTURE OF THE PROJECT

IS.LAND is a two weeks (12th – 26th September 2022) intensive residency program organized by BJCEM on the island of Procida in the framework of Procida Capitale Italiana della Cultura 2022.

Upon presentation of a site-specific research, five international artists under 35 and from the Mediterranean area will be invited to develop a process-based project on the island with the aim of collaborating with local communities and professionals in the production of an artwork of any nature. The participation of the five IS.LAND residents will be framed by a wider curatorial project – The Tending of the Otherwise – imagined by Simone Frangi and Alessandro Castiglioni and promoted and developed by BJCEM on the occasion of Procida Capitale Italiana della Cultura 2022. The participation to IS.LAND will lead to an Open Studio on the 25th of September 2022 where the five artistic projects will be publicly presented to local and international audiences. The development of the projects in Procida will be accompanied by the curators, BJCEM team and the production team of Procida Capitale della Cultura.

2 – THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The projects proposed by the candidates for IS.LAND should have a context-aware nature and take in consideration the geopolitical specificity of the island of Procida where they will unfold. The project will also have to deeply resonate with the curatorial framework The Tending of the Otherwise:

​​Islands are
Places apart
Where Europe is absent
Wrote Auden.
Islands are
From before or
For after humankind
Wrote Deleuze

Stuart McLean, “SEA” (2017)

In the exergue to “SEA” – a text with which Stuart McLean returns in 2017 after many years to the poetic space as a place to articulate socio-cultural issues – the anthropologist inscribes a statement that the Korean author Myung Mi Kim made in an interview in 2007: “The work of writing and reading and thinking is the tending of the otherwise”. This idea of taking care of an “otherwise”, of dedicating oneself to alternative possibilities through creative and intellectual work crosses the convictions expressed by McLean in Fictionalizing Anthropology. Encounters and Fabulations at the Edges of the Human (2017), where language and aesthetic, symbolic and material forms are proposed as performative methods to explore new horizons of collective life, which are able to fabulate unprecedented events and complex subjectivities between the human and the non-human. Taking Myung Mi Kim and Stuart McLean’s suggestions as a starting point, The tending of the otherwise project brings together 25 young artists from the Euro-Mediterranean area whose practices explore new sustainable imaginaries for contemporary life: the challenges of ecology and social inclusion; processes of subjectification in relation to political architectures; the role of urban and environmental innovation in fragile geopolitical contexts and the need for a downshifting in economic and cultural practices, particularly in Mediterranean micro-territories.

3 – ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA AND APPLICATION PROCEDURE

IS.LAND is open to artists with an interest in the cultural and artistic productions in the Mediterranean and in insular and small territories.

In order to be eligible for IS.LAND candidates have to be under 35 (born after 1987) and come from or be based in the following territories:  Albania, Algeria, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon,  Libya, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Norway, Palestine, Republic of San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, UK.

Eligible candidates shall send the following application material:

  • Portfolio: An updated book documenting their artistic practice and their past and current projects, highlighting their interest in the cultural and artistic productions in the Mediterranean (compressed Pdf, Quick Time or MP3 formats of max. 6MB);
  • Motivation letter;
  • Project Description: Each candidate has to outline a site-specific and context-aware project to be unfolded in a collaborative setting in the island of Procida in the span of 2 weeks residency. In this project outline, the candidate should also emphasize the contribution that their project could give to IS.LAND in respect to the theoretical issues detailed in point 2 – CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND (max. 2 pages);
  • Application form, downloadable HERE

All the dossiers (portfolio, motivation letter, project outline and application form) shall be sent in English or Italian to application@bjcem.org not later July 22nd 2022, at 10 pm (CEST). Any application not complying with the requirements will be automatically rejected.

4 – SELECTION MODALITIES

Applications will be evaluated at their incontestable discretion by scientific directors of The Tending of the Otherwise (Alessandro Castiglioni and Simone Frangi), the Director of Procida Italian Capital of Culture 2022, Agostino Riitano and the Executive Director of BJCEM Federica Candelaresi. Up to 5 practitioners will be selected from the present international Open Call.   

5 – TERMS

The participation to this call is free of charge.

Each selected candidate will receive a fee of 1000 euros. All the other expenses related to the participation to the residency (tickets, accommodations, per diem and production costs) will be directly covered by BJCEM.

In the frame of their participation to IS.LAND, the selected candidates are invited to present the result of the residency in a public Open Studio on the 25th of September 2022.

The participants will be selected during the weeks following the deadline for application detailed in the announcement and selection results will be communicated immediately on BJCEM website (bjcem.org ). The selected participants will be contacted by email.

6 – NOTES

This call and the participation in the project IS.LAND do not preclude the possibility to apply for future BJCEM national and/or international calls with different personal projects. All the artists who have already participated in the previous editions of the Biennale can apply to this call.

7 – FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

BJCEM Executive Office | bjcem.aisbl@gmail.com | +39 011 19504733 | www.bjcem.org

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