IN TRANSITION: the artistic and curatorial residency

About

The roundtable IN TRANSITION: the artistic and curatorial residency comes as a culmination of LIMITACTION; a six-month artistic and curatorial residency manifesting in the Window Space, London, from January to July 2015. The project featured artist Charlotte Warne Thomas and curators Margarida Brôco Amorim, Alejandro D. Ball, Miriam La Rosa and Stefania Sorrentino. Within the context of this event, which is part of the London Open Public Programme, a series of art professionals have been invited to share their experience on the topic of the artistic and curatorial residency. The discussion is accompanied by the launch of a publication curated by the LIMITACTION team. 

For booking a ticket, please click here http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/london-open-live/

For further info on the LIMITACTION project, please visit http://www.limitaction.co.uk/

Conceptual Overview:

The residency represents a crucial step in the career of artists and, more recently, curators. The participation in a residency programme has, in fact, become a key factor for professional development in the contemporary art field. Residencies are generally identified by a series of components: a studio space, opportunity to exhibit and living accommodation. Aside from this, participants may also be offered a budget and/or fee to deliver a programme or an exhibition at the conclusion of their stay. Originally, a residency implied being resident in another city or country; however this nature of mobility has become irrevocably altered. Nowadays, to be an artist or curator in residence can infer your residency within the same locality. What are the implications of this tendency? And what is the ultimate link between resident, residence and context? On the one hand, undertaking a residency can be positively read as an opportunity for visibility. On the other hand though, this format has seemingly become object of an institutional logic, whereby the host organisation tends to subtly overlook and drive the artistic process in favour of the realisation of a material product. In fact, many types of institutions list the residency as a primary component of their mission, in an attempt to enhance the appearance of their participatory focus and strengthen the link to the local community. Hence, residencies are growing to be highly competitive. In some cases, they are even synonym of a status symbol for artists and curators to raise their own public profile, improving their reputation and enriching their C.V. So what is still to be gained from an artistic and curatorial residency?

Roundtable Function and Goal:

The goal of the roundtable is to discuss both benefits and risks of the artistic and curatorial residency, as well as to examine the future progression of the residency concept. Hence, this will bring particular attention to current residency programmes and how they interact with their local context and surrounding community and, to a larger extent, how residencies drive an institutional mission. The conversation will be developed by a panel of speakers, invited to present a series of relevant case studies, thus, putting the topic of the residency under analysis from a diversity of perspectives; that of the artists, curators, non-profit organisations and host institutions, i.e. the Whitechapel Gallery.