Res Artis - Residencies: Gates and Bridges

May 2-5 2012, Vienna

Res Artis is The International Association of Residential Arts Centres, a foundation based in the Netherlands. Its members are residence centres and artist's organisations that encourage the development of contemporary art and support artists through residential artist exchange programs. With over 300 members from more than 50 countries it is the largest existing network of artist residency programs.

Res Artis provides a critical forum for residency programmes, convening international meetings and conferences where the exchange of ideas, practices and creative models test cultural assumptions and stimulate participants to open their institutions to new ways of creative interactions between the local and the global. Res Artis is promoting an understanding of the catalytic role that residential art centres play in the development of arts in all cultures and across all creative media.
www.resartis.org

Res Artis Regional Meeting 2012

While Asia, Africa and America are in our focus, Res Artis continues its engagement in Central and Eastern Europe with its third Regional Meeting in this area. In Vienna and with KulturKontakt as a partner, Res Artis aims to further the dialogue on how to build a sustainable civil society in Europe  and across national borders.
Res Artis’ aims with the regional meetings to:

• * Connect organizations of different levels of maturity: addressing both, experienced and emerging organizations;
  * Provide learning opportunities not only for residencies but also for parties potentially involved in supporting and developing international cultural exchange: city and regional authorities, art institutions, diplomats, artists’ organizations;
  * Present different models and conditions for residencies: production residencies, interdisciplinary artistic practices and collaborative approaches (arts-business-science connections), impact of residencies on the local cultural scene development and vice versa.

The theme of the conference will be Gates and Bridges. Since the iron curtain between West and East Europe vanished, Vienna became the economic gate to CEE and the entry point to a world that was previously more or less inaccessible for West Europe.
A residency often marks the first step to consciously encounter a different culture.
A residency is sometimes a means to look for one’s own roots by discovering the culture of the predecessors. Many artists living around the globe have ancestors in countries they have never seen before, because it was not possible for them to visit these parts of the world. In this sense, a residency can be a significant tool to learn more about one’s own cultural identity. It has a kind of gate function to one’s own self.
Being in residency always means to bring one’s own cultural rucksack to another place, and to take back home another culture’s input; residency is a cultural bridge building activity.

Target groups

The Regional Meeting is open to Res Artis members and non-members from the host country Austria as well as its surrounding countries. Special invitations will go out to (emerging) organizations in that area. We expect members from Eastern Europe and the region ranging from Western Europe, to the Middle East and Northern Africa. Also, a number of international foundations and funding bodies will be represented.
The acceptance of registration will be prioritised to representatives from the above mentioned regions but is not exclusive.

Significance of the conference

A feature of this meeting is the aspect of information exchange. The conference will have a working formula: lectures and workshops by specialists, focusing issues in residencies for writers, translators and performing artists. Best practice presentations and many informal networking opportunities. Two Open Space sessions will provide the opportunity for focussed discussions. While in the first one the organisers will "sell" some topics for discussion and by that introduce the audience to the Open Space discussion form the second one the participants can put forward the topics they would like to discuss with the fellow participants

"Bridge" to Bratislava

Last day of the conference is an optional hover craft boat round trip on the Danube river to the neighbour capital of Slovakia. The attendants will have the opportunity to visit residency initiatives in Bratislava and spend the evening again in Vienna.

REGISTRATION FORM

Note: You must book you hotel room yourself. the price indicated above will be granted if the keyword "ResArtis-Meeting" is mentioned in your reservation e-mail to the hotel.

Accommodation:

Hotel Alpha
Buchfeldgasse 8, 1080 Vienna
t: +43 1 403 52 91,
f: +43 1 403 52 91-62
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Single room 84,- Euro
Double room  94,- Euro

Hotel Ibis
Mariahilfer Gürtel 22-24, 1060 Vienna
t: +43 1 59998-0
f: +43 1 59998-238
e: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Single room 86,- Euro
Double room 115,- Euro

Hotel Regina
Rooseveltplatz 15, A-1090 Vienna
t: +43 1 404 46-0
f: +43 1 408 83 92
e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Single room 105,- Euro
Double room 120,- Euro

Kulturkontakt Austria
Renate Bartaun
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Res Arits
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