Open Call: Weavers' Residency 2022/2023
Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, LT
Deadline: 09.01.2022
Graphic design by Vytautas Volbekas
NAC calls for practitioners with theoretical, historical, and / or practical interest in textiles, especially analogue weaving, to apply for a residency in Nida in 2022 and 2023.
Applications are open to participants from the Nordic European region: Åland Islands, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden. The residency will be carried out in four time periods: March–June 2022, August–December 2022, January–June 2023, and August–December 2023.
Application deadline: 9 January 2022, Midnight EET (Helsinki)
In the art and literature of antiquity weaving unites political wisdom and domestic peace. Associated with knowledge, it stands as a response to external threats of chaos, symbolising the imposition of a particular harmony or unity on disparate and disordered elements by weaving them together or somehow preserving their integrity and transcending the passage of time.
Applying a material-based methodology to weaving as techne, the residency is conceived as both a production and research residency – a space to unfold the legacy and significance of this rich and complex technique, skill and craft. Nida is looking for participants who are conceptually, theoretically, historically or philosophically interested and / or technically equipped and experienced in working with analogue weaving, embroidery, knitting and felting techniques.
NAC is interested to connect this residency to the Neringa Forest Architecture programme that focuses on the features of both the human-made and natural forest: its ecological rhythms, organic and industrial material cycles, timber-based material development, socio-political discourses, history, forestry and policy-making; art, design and architecture. In this project, the trees of the Curonian forest and all of its distinct eco-socio-political features are literally, and figuratively, the foundational material of the programme.
For the Weavers’ Residency NAC sees the practice of weaving and the analogue loom as a ground material to open up other ways of reading the unique landscape of Nida – its colour palette, the embodied knowledge, and the socio-political context, which highlights the necessity of skills, some lost and forgotten, some newly discovered. NAC seeks participants with an established body of work and a practice that reflects and incorporates the meaning and outreach of weaving techniques as part of the story-telling immersed in political, economic, gender, and historical discourses, and as techniques used to develop complex narratives, structuring roles and identity patterns.
Living and working conditions
NAC hosts up to five residents at a time. Residents live/work in a 65m2 studio equipped with basic kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and workspace facilities. An analogue, Soviet-era floor loom approx. 80cm width is set up in the studio. A second, 50cm width floor loom, is located in one of the communal workshops.
Residents have full access to the communal spaces such as the reading room and the workshops with ceramic kiln, laser cutting, basic wood and metalworking tools, basic photo, video and sound equipment, silkscreen, and a hand printing press. In addition, residents are invited to work with naturally seasoned, Neringa-sourced, timber logged over the past two winters and stored on-site at NAC.
The Weavers’ Residency is aimed at experienced practitioners. The programme does not provide training in basic techniques though support from an experienced technician regarding the use of the looms, as well as assistance in sourcing local materials will be provided.
In addition to the residency programme, NAC organises art and research projects, exhibitions and events. NAC is a subdivision of Vilnius Academy of Arts and hosts students’ seminars and work retreats.
Costs
Each selected resident / collective will receive a monthly grant of 900 EUR and additional travel costs.
Application requirements
(1) Completed application form
(2) Portfolio, sample of work, or publications (selection of 3–5 relevant projects)
(3) Current CV (max. two A4 pages)
(4) Submit all documents in PDF format, in a single file, in the order listed above using the following title: ‘Full Name_ NFA’.
Submit your application and related application questions to: residency@nidacolony.lt
Applications will be assessed by the NAC curatorial team. Selected applicants will be informed early February 2022.
Funded by Nordic Culture Point.
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