Opencall: »Undesired by the Market: Resting!« curated by dgtl fmnsm
»Hey dear!
Wanna hang? Wanna work?«
With the 17th Call for Web Residencies by Solitude, curated by Sarah Fartuun Heinze, Andara Shastika, Franziska Goralski and Ulla Heinrich for dgtl fmnsm, artists are invited to experience, explore and enjoy taking a restful break in a utopian space of possibility from an intersectional and queer feminist perspective. Because the radical break – whether in the form of creative freedom in the context of a virtual artist residency or a self-chosen sabbatical – is, above all, one thing: a space of possibility.
We are interested in what artists and collectives do in their breaks, which aesthetic and emotional practices exist and which ones have yet to be invented. Who can actually take breaks, and what class issues are associated with breaks? What is more feminist than taking a break together, alone, or just because? What if our lives were structured by pleasure, softness and community instead of our deadlines? What happens to us when we close the tabs in our head? What do breaks in the digital world look like? What would we do if we did not make use of every opportunity? What qualities must a break display in order to be more than a mere charging station in the capitalist cycle of exploitation, and is this even possible?
Individual artists as well as groups and collectives are invited to adopt the space of the radical pause, shaping it as they see fit. Go on vacation, complete an aesthetic project that has long been eating up your breaks, or design your own break-free utopia: because perhaps breaks have become superfluous in our contemporary utopian spaces. Who knows?
Application format
A declaration of intent, designed in any kind of media of your choice is sufficient for a submission. dgtl fmnsm works exclusively with queer people, BIPoC and FLINTA (women, lesbian, inter, non-binary/enby, trans and agender people).
This must be sent by e-mail to: webresidencies(at)akademie-solitude.de, subject: Web Residency Call by dgtl fmnsm – declaration of intent (Pausenmanifest).
Grant selection process
Neither the curators nor the staff of Akademie Schloss Solitude will select projects for this call. After all, who can decide who is most in need of a break room? All groups and artists who apply for the call are then invited to decide who should be selected.
Timeline
Submission period: October 19 – November 15, 2021
Voting phase
Individual voting: 14.01.–30.01.2022
Collective voting event / hackathon / online: 15.01.2022 (5 hours)
· Announcing the four WR grants: first week of February 2022
· Web Residency: 08.02.–07.03.2022
· Project launch – publication of all break manifestos, plus generated material: mid-March 2022
Please email digitalsolitude(at)akademie-solitude.de with any questions.
Call team
The collective dgtl fmnsm has been examining what virtual potential lies in the contemporary performing arts and how a theater of the future might look in digitalized societies in hybrid and interdisciplinary formats, both online and offline, since 2016. The network-based collective works in fluid constellations within the context of festivals and digital artist residencies, as advisors for online formats and their policies and mentors for virtual aesthetic practices. Here, the focus is placed on the various forms taken by emancipatory and collective collaboration in a hypercapitalist world, and which critical connections we need in order to avoid exploiting one another more and more.
Sarah Fartuun Heinze
Sarah Fartuun Heinze was born in Marka (Somalia) in 1989, is Swabian, lives in Cottbus and works as a multidisciplinary freelance artist and cultural educator from a queer feminist, intersectional perspective at the interface of theater, games, music and empowerment. She sees herself as an aesthetic researcher and is a member of the Creative Gaming initiative, a freelance author and part of the New German Media Makers. What’s more, Sarah Fartuun Heinze likes to play games. One of her favorites is »Zelda: Ocarina of Time«, probably because the key to most of the puzzles lies in the music. And, as is so often the case, it is equally far from screens and theater stages.
Andara Shastika
Andara Shastika or Shasti (born in Jakarta in 1992 – now based in Kassel) is an artist and organizer who embraces multi-disciplinary/directional practices and areas of curiosity. As a visual artist, Shasti works with performance and digital media on subjects such as language, revenge, curses, demonic voices, haunting and ghosts. As an organiser at the interface of art and activism, she is active in multiple Kassel-based intersectional queer feminist and BPoC-led collaborative contexts, including the livestream platform TERRARISTA TV, the BPoC artists’ initiative Cura Han Hati, and the recent first ever BPoC Festival. She is currently employed as an artistic assistant to Prof. Dr. Swantje Lichtenstein and Prof. Maria Schleiner, working on the research project »ComArts« at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf. Shasti is also a vocalist with the hardcore band ORANG.
Franziska Goralski
Franziska Goralski (born in Radebeul in 1992) studied fine arts in Dresden until 2017, is founder of the Department for Potentiality to Act and works with food & intellectual concepts. Her conceptual approaches constitute a cross-media experience. She collaborates with Anna Erdmann as the duo »die Blaue Distanz« on queer themes and low-hierarchy spatial concepts. After an artistic research stay in Los Angeles funded by the DAAD, she consolidated her interest in fairer models of future coexistence at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam in the Master’s program »The Commoner’s Society«. Since then, the Department for Potentiality to Act has been investigating practices – i.e. active practices – on the topic of commons.
Ulla Heinrich
Ulla Heinrich (born in Dresden in 1987) is a cultural mediator, curator and cultural manager (MA) who works in communication. From 2015-2018, she worked at HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts as Head of Digital Communication, Assistant to the Artistic Director and Head of Special Projects. Ulla Heinrich has been organizing and executing projects and workshops on the topic of digitality and gender for teenagers, young adults and educational professionals for over a decade. A feminist activist, Heinrich gives lectures on the topic and organizes free educational events with her Dresden-based group böse&gemein. She is the initiator, curator and collective member of dgtl fmnsm and has been the CEO of Missy Magazine since May 2019.