Open A.i.R. April

Part of the project

Pilsen 2015 European Capitol of Culture

artistic program of Pilsen - European Capital of Culture 2015

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www.plzen2015.cz

www.depo2015.cz

INDEX

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EDITORIAL

NEW TEAM MEMBER JAVI NEW TEAM MEMBER Å IMON KERN PAST EVENTS REPORT FROM WROCLAW

OPEN CALL FOR CZECH ARTISTS TO JAPAN OPEN CALL NOZOMI WATANABE CALL PAID RESIDENCY NEXT EVENTS

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01/ EDITORIAL

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE FINAL PRESENTATION? During the residencies we supervise the artist work. We take care of the artist´s schedule (usually the very busy one), the process of creation, networking and of all the production issues (how wide is “the world of production”! though) starting from arranging the accommodation and the work space till putting some cream butter on the breads for the final presentation of the artist where all and everyone involved should come together. Then an evaluation comes, the time of final reports, paying the last invoices, new deadlines, our minds work almost like the robots´ ones those days.

Our artist, who very often becomes our friend, and always and definitely someone who you care about anyway every day of his/ her residency stay, is suddenly far away and it is somehow “business” again. The artist has different projects to solve, to follow.

However, and in my opinion this is a crucial point, we do stay in touch with our former artists in residence, we do follow their journey carefully. We are still good friends or good colleagues. It is a process of sharing ideas, it is learning, it is about reflection what the residency has brought to the artist. That is what we talk about.

We do not talk so much about how fruitful and inspiring is for us, for the OPEN A.i.R. “Because artists make the residencies and the residencies make the artists”

03 We do believe that the above mentioned steps (well, there are still more of them which we have not mentioned, maybe another time :)) lead to a successful residency project. Those are afterwards the proof of a successful work.

For our artists the main objective of the residency is to develop their techniques, their experiences, their work; in short - their careers. Consequently, we should provide them with information, experiences, inspiration and help, not only during the residency, but we also following their careers. The relationship should not end with the residency, because artists make the residencies and the residencies make the artists.

Residencies will not work without artists, and the artists will spread the name of the residency program during their career. (Hopefully the good one! :)) By following the walk of our forme artist we can see if the residency has been useful for them. However, if we do not see the results we can change our praxis. Making ourselves a better residency and also making the artist‘s satisfaction increase during their stay, therefore they will create better artworks and experiences.

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02/ NEW TEAM MEMBER Javi Introduction

JAVI

Hello dear reader, my name is Javi, I have arrived two months ago to Pilsen. I am originally from the Basque Country, Spain. I am intern at the OPEN A.i.R. program. When I finished my degree in journalism and after spending one summer writing in a local newspaper I decided to study Corporative Communication in order to apply my knowledge in communication of other type of organizations. I have moved to Barcelona and have worked in the Lobster’s Day Furniture. My tasks there were communication with community and development of office work.

This is my professional background. I do not like to be so formal; this is not a job interview. So here I left you a text which mixes personal details with my first impressions about Pilsen, the city that has welcomed me.

I hope you enjoy it!

I miss the sea, the freedom and calm that it spreads. It’s not the first time I leave Bilbao, my hometown, but this time I miss the sea.

While I was preparing my trip I put Jack Kerouac On The Road book in my suitcase, because I love that story. So I don’t miss that story, I miss the sea. I take with me Amy Winehouse vinyl too, because I love her. Her music sounds here, so I don’t miss her. I miss the sea. I bring with me all my memories, my knowledge and my mobile phone, which allows me to stay in touch with my friends. So I don’t miss my past. I miss the sea.

My desire to work, to learn and to get to know new people while I am in Pilsen, are with me. So I don’t miss my future. Because I know it is going to be worthy. But I miss the sea.

I don’t bring many things more with me. Just some winter clothes, which I have been using them for almost two weeks. Pilsen is very cold, so I don’t miss the cold. I miss the sea.

Fortunately, the other day after I was working for the OPEN A.i.R. Program, Tereza showed me the beautiful river which also spreads those magical sensations. I guess the water is sweet instead of salty. But I don’t have any problem with that, I love sweets.

©Šimon Kern

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02/ NEW TEAM MEMBER Simon Introduction

ŠIMON KERN

Šimon Kern (*1988) after finishing his studies of design in Zvolen, Slovakia, his birthplace, moved around Europe (London, Prague, Murcia and Ljubljana) to improve his skills in solving “mainly the global problems, which ordinary people experience in their everyday life”. He is proud of his Slovak roots and as a good designer he was selected as part of Flowers for Slovakia here, a workshop that aims to merge the richness of Slovak folk heritage with contemporary design. Šimon has just finished the first residency project in his life. At the same time he became the first artist in residence of OPEN A.i.R. in the 2017 year. Šimon does not know how this experience will change his career, but he is receiving a lot of feedback for his work, “which definitely helps with his ideas and skills and will give him a lot for the future”. While he was preparing his new stunning project in the Creative Zone DEPO2015, he has enjoyed being working and living in Pilsen, because people were ”super friendly and very helpful”. His shoes have even been repared by the girl from the sewing workspace. Šimon is aware of the environment, and by creating and presenting the Petotem, his new installation, he wanted “to show, how plastic waste can be recycled and used again in a form of plastic bricks. The Petotem showed the story of the plastic, the time that creates the waste and the change that all we can made if we do the right choices”.

He describes himself as someone who “likes solving problems”. Moreover he is always willing to share his environmental awareness and change the view that people have about the plastic recycling. His Petotem project was presented at the Blik Blik Festival which took place on 17 and 18 March.

13 ©Javier Prieto

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03/ PAST EVENTS Report from Wroclaw/ FUNDRAISING of the AiR programs

HOW TO DIE AND BECOME SUSTAINABLE For someone who does not work in the field of art and culture understanding how artist residencies work is not an easy task.

Especially, in terms of fundraising. This was the main subject of the second edition of the A-i-R Wro Talks taking place in November/December in Wroclaw, Poland. Managers of artist in residence programs and related institutions all over Europe attended this three-days-long event. The program consisted of open talks, panel discussion and activities during which the managers shared their praxis, their know-how.

During the talks I started to understand that each residency might be totally different. It has it own characteristics, not just in terms of fundraising, but in all the structure, the way they review the projects, the spaces and facilities that they arrange and also in terms of the length of the residency stay.

Most probably we all will agree that money is important for any activity, moreover in the field of art and culture, where the business relationships are more complex than established commercial companies. Obviously the institutions who run artist-in-residence programs have been depending on public funds quite a lot. Each manager needs to find his/ her own way of obtaining enough money to sustain, however it is pretty clear that if you get money from someone it might cause a certain level of dependency on the donors‘ ideas and thoughts either on the project process or on the cooperation in general. It is rare to find a donor who gives you money and at the same “the unlimited freedom”.

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07 ©Javier Prieto

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03/ PAST EVENTS Report from Wroclaw/ FUNDRAISING of the AiR programs

“In the field of art and culture the business relationships are more complex.”

The main sources of income are public and private. As I understand the public ones are easy to lose. Politicians and structures change. The next year you may not to get the financial support from your main sponsor. As it is the case of cultural mobility information network On The Move here. After not receiving finances of their funders they had to out of sudden rethink how to make their project sustain, they had to restructure their organization in a big scale. Finally, they have started to charge for their services.

Maybe we are in the inflexion point of cultural fundraising.

Cultural organizations are working hard to become independent on public bodies. In my opinion, although it could be hard to achieve this independency after all it is good for them. When they are not dependant on funders, they are going to be able to develop their own objectives and interests. They can risk and experiment more.

“Finding new ways of developing the artist in residence programs it is not just a matter of surviving” This independency can bring to artists and managers a possibility of expanding their horizons. And I believe that this is an evolution. Finding new ways of developing the artist in residence programs it is not just a matter of surviving, it is also a way to rethink the objectives, to create new business models, to bring new ideas.

11 As people organizations who work inside their comfort zone (they are usually also those who are having an enormous budget), they stop growing and making a self-reflection, they stop offering new things, they do not bring anything “fresh”.

In short, they stop evolving. It might be fruitful to lose (yes, burn-outs also count! haha). It might be good to stop for a moment, to breath and rethink what you work on and why. What your motivations are. We are very often lost with different grant applications, financial reports, we have to do all the “not-so-super-funny” tasks (and in my opinion, every five minutes there is a new rule). Somehow we do not have time to think over, to go to the grounds. You just do your job. Fulfilling the vision and mission which you made it up ten years ago (and maybe just for some grant application). And finally, deadlines usually have no mercy.

Is time to move forward, to find new ways of obtaining money, getting more freedom so we could offer better conditions to our artists. Well, that is the final goal of AIR organisations, right?

Written by Javier Prieto

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04/ OPEN CALL for Czech artists to Japan

We are now selecting the artist who will go to Tokyo, Japan for a 2-months-long residency already this Autumn!

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04/ OPEN CALL Results of the closed open call / Japanese artist to DEPO2015

NOZOMI WATANABE The Japanese city of Hadano near Tokyo nestles in a kind of geological basin its suburbs edging up its surrounding mountainous ridges. Nozomi Watanabe, a Japanese artist, spent many childhood hours observing and drawing the shifting horizons she experienced residing in an area half way up these slopes. Like the steep escarpments and sight lines often seen in Japanese anime like those of Studio Ghibli, this was a world of shifting perspectives and associated parallax. Nozomi would often contemplate these seismic connections between grounded light plans and rotating nighttime constellations whose fluid relationships would vary according to her height in the hills, the whole visual field being held together and observed as if within some large radio dish or held in an optical lens.

The idea of the telescope underlines much of Nozomi’s work. Letting us see increasingly distant objects they condense space bring proximity to both the distant and near. It is the ‘in reach’ allusiveness that excites wonder. Part of Nozomi’s wish is to express the relationships and continuity between distant points – the pulses of energy emitted from the cosmos – creating a kind of correlative map of stars and the land. Like the shifting parallax experienced while traveling though the evening landscape of Hadano, these maps change with our position. Like telescopes, maps also flatten the space and have a coincidental parallel to the flattened perspectives often found within the Japanese painting tradition.

Many of Nozomi’s works act like map locators such as ‘Observation Points’ from 2016. The spatial distribution of illuminated balloons, while corresponding to a constellation, invite the viewer to look from these fixed points, suggesting a subtle change like ‘viewing stations’ used in eighteenth century landscape gardens, each station opening up a new vista or sightline to a point of interest. This however is also a landscape of natural phenomena where matrices are divined between the sound patterns of rainfall or the falling of leaves; seemingly random phenomena containing encrypted code.

- written by Edward Chell (Artist/Curator)

Nozomi is showing the project ‚Observation Points‘ in the exhibition project ‘The Nomads 2017’ which will take place in DEPO2015 from June 8 till October 10 2017, collaborating with people of Pilsen.

Here you can find more information about the project ‚Observation Points‘ which was held in the UK in 2016.

©Nozomi Watanabe

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05 / CALL “paid residency”

OPEN A.i.R. Artist in Residence Program as a legacy programme of Pilsen – European Capital of Culture 2015 is inviting artists and designers from all over the world to live and work in the DEPO2015 Creative Zone in Pilsen, Czech Republic.

Date of residency: February – November 2017. The artist would choose the period of his/her residency (maximum 6 weeks), however the residency time frame has to be approved by the coordinators.

Number of participants: up to 3, the artist can come with a companion.

Profile of the resident: Artist who wants to develop his/her project in the DEPO2015 Creative Zone; while collaborating and contributing with his/her ideas and know how to the organization. The artist wanted should be openminded and willing to collaborate with DEPO2015 crew.

The OPEN A.i.R. Program focuses mainly on visual arts, new media and topics of open source, recycling and DIY approach. Giving preferences to design, digital and interactive art.

Language: English or Czech Applications including CV (in a tabular form with an overview of past exhibitions, etc.), portfolio of recent works (up to 5 different projects) and cover letter commenting on artist intention in English or Czech should be sent not later than two months before the start of the residency project to Javier Prieto, prieto@depo2015.cz.

The specialist jury make the decision within two weeks after receiving the application. In your cover letter please mention what are the topics and issues you are currently working on or you would like to target during the residency.

Let us know what motivates you to come to live and work in Pilsen.

Conditions of the residency: The OPEN A.i.R. programme currently resides at the DEPO2015 Creative Zone, with facilities such as one art studio, a flat for artists and many spaces for the final presentations of residents. The artists can also use machines and the masters‘ craftsmanship in the open workshop Makerspace situated right at DEPO2015.

Shared studio> €100 / per one month - 70m2, height 3,5m - a really good space, quiet, sunny - fully equipped, a small library, Internet access - there is a small kitchen, WC - also there is a darkroom for photographers

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Flat> €10 per 1 night in the case that it is a whole month then it will cost only €200 - the flat is located in DEPO2015 - fully equipped: double- bed, small kitchen, WC, shower - Internet connection

It is also possible to use all the workspaces in DEPO2015 for the fee 2€/ 1 hour (with the consultation of our masters). We have there fab lab, sewing lab, makerspace (work with metal, wood...), graphic studio, screen printing studio.

Curatorial and production support is provided for free.

We can provide artist with 30% discount on the accommodation and studio rent fees if: - The artist would be willing to share his/her open source - The artist want to leave his/her artwork in DEPO2015 - The artist will organise series of workshops for public Be sure that everything is up to the mutual agreement. We want you to feel comfortable and free to work in the DEPO2015. Therefore do not hesitate to contact us for further details.

DEPO2015 is an outcome of the Pilsen – European Capital of Culture 2015 project. The heart of DEPO2015 is The Centre for Creative Enterprise which connects culture with business and creative industries. The depot is a place where both start-ups and established companies reside, work, create, present and trade. A community of creative people with great ideas and the ambition to realise them has the opportunity to go through a process of incubation, i.e. to kick-start their business plan with the assistance and mentoring of professionals from the culture and creative industries, they can use a shared working space, an open workshop to make prototypes or rent a studio or an office. DEPO2015 is also an open cultural space which is needed for the development of new ideas, and it increases the attractiveness of the place for the people who reside, work and create at DEPO2015 as well as the general public. Exhibitions are held here as well as performing arts events and interesting meet ups.

For more information check: DEPO2015: www.depo2015.cz OPEN A.i.R.: www.facebook.com/openairplzen or contact: Javier Prieto on this open call - prieto@depo2015.cz Tereza Svášková on the OPEN A.i.R. Program - svaskova@depo2015.cz

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06/ NEXT EVENTS

DEPO2015 EVENTS 26 a 27/05 - European Neighbours‘ Day (Pilseners are going to fill their town of acts and events directed by themselves) June - Maker Faire (the festival for all the professionals, hobbyists and innovators) 6/06 - 31/12 - The Nomads 2017 (exhibition which reflects the current situation of an extreme number of people fleeing from their homes) 9/06 - 19/08 - Summer Barroque Festival 2017 10/10 - 31/12 - Baroque Alive 20-22/10 - Treffpunkt: Bavarian-Czech cultural festival (enjoy the best regional music, dance, costumes, art and gastronomy) 28/10 - DEPO Street Food Market November - PlzeĹˆ Design! (The best designers of Czech Republic exhibit, sell and talk about their designs) more info about the events on www.depo2015.cz

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more info: