Fellowship Program for Art and Theory 2021-22

Dear friends of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen,

After an eventful first half of the year and a shortened Fellowship 2020-21, which, despite the adversities caused by the pandemic, ended successfully with new productions created on site, we start a new Fellowship year in October, hopefully under less challenging conditions.

In their respective work projects, the Büchsenhausen Fellows 2021-22 combine feminist-queer perspectives and proceedings with questions of coping with the past in order to develop a better and more profound understanding of our present. In her speculative artistic research, Rosalyn D’MELLO focuses on the “study” of “art” of so-called housewives, mystics and spinsters. She establishes a connection with the contemporary works of feminist artists who, too, were long considered outsiders in art history and whose achievements were only recognized late in their careers. Sam RICHARDSON explores the figure of St. Wilgefortis – also known as St. Kümmernis – a “bearded crucified woman” who historically came to be a patron saint of relief from tribulations – in particular, for women who wish to be liberated from abusive husbands or domestic situations, as well as for survivors of sexual assault, rape and incest. Suzana MILEVSKA’s research project Ethical and Aesthetical Protocols of Apology brings into focus the potentialities and limitations of various protocols of apology and renaming as performative artistic strategies aiming towards social change and reconciliation. The theorist will examine various examples of individual, social, activist and artistic strategies such as public apology of institutional officials or private citizens, replacing or renaming monuments, streets, holidays, and public spaces. And finally, the curator and author Olga ŞTEFAN, who is working on an essay film documenting her attempt to recreate an art exhibition that took place shortly after Romania’s liberation from the fascist Antonescu regime. This 1945 exhibition portrayed life and death in Romanian concentration camps and represented different forms of antifascist resistance performed by the Jewish prisoners. The film will not only bring to light the artists’ work for the first time in 77 years but also prompt us to contemplate politics of memory, turns of history, and the role of art in politics.

The participants of the Fellowship Program 2021-22 were selected from over 130 applications and invited to work in Büchsenhausen by a jury consisting of Christoph Hinterhuber (artist and member of the advisory board), Lisa Mazza (curator and member of the advisory board) and Andrei Siclodi (director of the Künstlerhaus). The Fellows will present themselves, their work and their projects in the context of the Start Up Lectures 2021-22 on Friday, 15 October 2021 in Büchsenhausen.

On the evening of 10 October 2021, after the screening of the film Image Diplomacy by Vladislav Shapovalov in cooperation with the International Film Festival Innsbruck (IFFI), we will launch the subsequent book in the presence of the artist. The book was published in 2020 by Mousse Publishing under the editorship of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen and ar/ge kunst Bozen as part of the series Büchs’n’Books – Art and Knowledge Production in Context. Besides a detailed documentation of the project and the film, the publication assembles texts by Gudrun Ratzinger, Alex Fletscher and Andrei Siclodi as well as a conversation between the artist and the curator Emanuele Guidi.

In the context of the Premierentage 2021 and in the presence of the filmmaker, we will show the film Gestures of Resistance by Olga ŞTEFAN on 6 November 2021 in Büchsenhausen.

Up-to-date information on our Fellowship Program and events can be found on our website, Facebook and in our newsletters.

We wish you exciting and enlightening experiences with the Fellowship Program of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen!

With best regards
Andrei Siclodi & Team