We are happy to announce the Winners of the 2024 Spring Open Call! The quantity and quality of the proposals have led the jury to an exciting and complex deliberation process. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a proposal for their interest and efforts. And we are thrilled to welcome:
Dorota Gawęda (PL/CH) and Eglė Kulbokaitė ( LT/CH) both graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2012. They work in multiples across performance, painting, sculpture, fragrance, video and installation – where language breaks down and one genre morphs into many. Transfusing different bodies of knowledge across space and time, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė nurture a research-based practice that weaves together seemingly disparate fields – ecology and technology, science and magic, nonhuman intelligence and shared speculation.
During the PAiR residency programme, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė will focus on their new project high-up noises. high-up noises centres on the artists’ research into Baltic and Slavic folklore, science fiction and social histories to create a surreal scenario of facing oneself amidst the ecological crisis. The central character of the landscape demon Południca appears to the peasant in the delirium of the heat, when they are at their most vulnerable, expressing the contemporary anxieties related to ecological and social unease. Gawęda and Kulbokaitė’s high-up noises is a multi-layered development of their creative practice drawing conceptual and material threads from the -lalia (2021-) performance.
They have exhibited at Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin, Paris; Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris; Vilnius Biennial; Kunsthalle Mainz; EPFL Pavilions, Lausanne; Shedhalle, Zürich; Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna; CCS, Paris; Kunstverein Hamburg; Swiss Institute, New York; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Kunsthalle Fribourg; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Athens Biennale; Kunsthalle Basel; ICA, London among others. They are the founders of the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013–2021). They are the recipients of the Allegro Artist Prize 2022; CERN Collide Residency 2022 and laureates of the Swiss Performance Art Award 2021.
Luīze Rukšāne received a bachelor’s degree in audiovisual and media art from the Latvian Academy of Arts. Louise has been creating and participating in exhibitions since 2016, works in various visual art media, works a lot with the graphite drawing technique, organizes her own and her contemporaries’ exhibitions. As part of the residency, the artist will search for scraps of cotton fabric that are no longer needed by the residents of Pāvilosta with the help of advertisements, which she will then use to create an installation in the space, thus continuing to work with the theme of tangible and intangible heritage, which she started in her last solo exhibition.
Kriste Stan obtained her BA in London Middlesex University inLondon in 2015. In 2009, she became one of the first Lithuanians to start a fashion and style blog,FeedYour Fashion Animal, and has been actively participating in the fashion world for over a decade now.After moving to England for her studies, the artist worked with various publications and brands,deepening her knowledge in fashion, and developing her personal activities between Vilnius and London.After graduating, Kristėrediscovered herself in graphic design and started expanding her clientele bycreating linear drawings.
ROTOR, a Dutch collective who makes physical performances. ROTOR’s performances delve into the absurd banality of existence, simultaneously revealing its endless beauty. Performers often undertake extreme exertions, engaging in repetitive actions, searching for the creative and kinetic potential within physical limitations. A thorough study precedes the exploration of the body’s possibilities, where they grapple with themselves, drawing inspiration from diverse disciplines such as the Dutch Mime tradition, Kung Fu, and free running.
Wingel Mendoza, a Mexico City-born composer and sound artist based in Germany, has seen his work performed internationally and received multiple prizes, including first prizes in composition competitions. A two-time “Jóvenes Creadores” program recipient and he is a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators, his diverse body of work spans orchestral compositions to sound art exhibitions across the world. Mendoza’s approach intertwines sound with memories, images, and interactions with technology, nature, and other art forms, aiming to broaden musical perception through improvisation, collaboration, and the creation of unique analog and digital instruments.
Haruka Fukao is a Japanese artist. She studied at Bergen University as an MA Fine Art student and at UiT as an MA in Visual Anthropology to create a film about a bereaved couple scattering the ashes of their children. She is interested in the balance of the social self and substance which everyone gets when they are born. She loves deconstructing definitions of things to recreate another view of the world through filming, performance art and other mediums with no limitations.
WURI lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. She received her BFA(2002) from the Korean National University of Arts, South Korea. She has been working on various media such as photography, video, and installation with everyday materials that are easy to ‘disappear’ into stories that combine personal experiences and place-specific situations. She has participated in several exhibitions abroad, as well as art galleries in Seoul, and collaborates with NGOs and various communities. Recently, has developed an interest in place attachment, place identity, and place memory in modern urban society, acknowledging the challenges of accumulating place attachment in the contemporary globalized world. Her working process frequently includes preliminary research on place experiences and workshop sessions with community members, which serves as a platform to comprehensively form the background for the project. Thus, she utilizes these activities as tools to find artistic ways to communicate within relationships with others and society.
Frederikke Jul Vedelsby is working across drawing, text, and time-based media. In her work she is experiencing access to expanded states of consciousness, is suggesting irregularity – and addresses the limitations of understanding itself. The drawings are acknowledging somatic experience- and knowledge exchange that happens beyond her intellect and across bodies and time. With kinetic b/w 16mm film and with video, the people she is filming with, act personal, in-the-moment improvised rituals, as a practice of awareness, opposition to a society ruled by capital, onedirectionality, and effectivity.
Rebekka Bank is a Danish artist whose practise builds on writing and collecting as creative tools to establish vital connections with the manifold complex ecologies of my direct environment. With a focus on urban landscapes, I observe contemporary life through a critical lens while at the same time rebuilding intimacy in those very same fast-paced surroundings. Through explorations of micro and macro worlds, my work manifests as performances, stories, rituals, tools and garments, bringing new perspectives into a world that is too often defined by alienation and overstimulation.
