ARC Magazine shares Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Call for Applications and Q&A with the Director

October 24, 2014October 23, 2014Leave a comment

The call for applications to undertake a residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany is open until October 31, 2014. Read an interview here between Katherine Kennedy – current fellow in the ResSupport programme supported by Res Artis, representing the Fresh Milk Art Platform at the Akademie – and the programme’s founding and artistic director, Jean-Baptiste Joly. The conversation reveals more about the Akademie’s mandate, the relationships built between the institution and the residents, and interest in cultivating ties with the Caribbean arts community.

Read the interview originally conducted for ARC Magazine below:

Katherine Kennedy: Founded in 1990, Akademie Schloss Solitude will celebrate its 25^th anniversary next year. Can you share with us the original mission of the Akademie, and in what ways it has been realized, grown and adapted over this time?

Jean-Baptiste Joly: The Akademie was established, so say our statutes “in order to promote art and culture…in particular by awarding residence fellowships to emerging artists and organizing artistic encounters, seminars and conferences, performances, readings, concerts and exhibitions by fellows and guests…” When it was opened to artists in July 1990, the former prime minister of Baden-Württemberg that initiated the project said he wanted a black box for artistic research, hidden in a Baroque castle. This is still what Akademie Schloss Solitude is doing, but many things have changed in our practice since: In 1996, we created the new fellowship program for art coordination; young people working in the field of culture as managers, being brought on as both staff members and regular fellows in the house. This totally transformed the dynamic between staff and fellows, making them more fluent, less frontal. With their daily contribution, these fellows cover the grey zone that is always growing between the everyday life of artists and the administration.

In 2002, we founded the new program art, science & business, promoting dialogue between these three not necessarily connected domains of human activities. Since that time, the Akademie can really affirm its interdisciplinary thoughts and practices. I couldn’t put a precise date to another major change, but in the last couples of years we had to react more flexibly to the planning of Solitude’s studios, accepting that artists split the time of their residencies, coming twice or three times for shorter periods. People, especially artists, want to be simultaneously in different places, constantly having to move – they become nervous when they stay at the same place too long. This is a sign of our times, and has its downside. The best thing we can offer to our guests is a time that belongs to them, not to the institution, a time at your disposal, not stolen by urgent and often not so important necessities. In general, artists finally understand this, sometimes just too late…

KK: Residencies exist as critical cultural institutions, set apart from museums or galleries mainly due to instances of encounter and possibility taking precedence over preservation or output. Tell us about the space provided by the Akademie, and how it is conducive to these flexible journeys of discovery, reflection and creation.

JBJ: Museums and Libraries have the task of conserving cultural goods; schools ensure the transmission of knowledge through teaching; theatres make public (or should make public) the crucial problems of our civilisation. These are, since the time of the ancient Greeks, the different modes of transmitting culture. Residencies take over parts of what theatres, schools and museums do, but they have another task that is publicly less immediate: selecting artists (yes, residencies decide who is an artist and who is not!) and supporting them, giving them time, space, material, facilities and contacts. By doing so, they contribute largely to the individual life of artists. They also make the art scene they are located in more international, more permeable to otherness and difference.

Residencies also have an open way of re-thinking the contract between artists and institutions. Besides the necessity of staying at the Schloss two thirds of the time of the fellowship (and accepting an invitation for dinner every month), Solitude-fellows have no other obligation. This generous approach gives the Akademie the possibility of permanently re-inventing the relations between artist and institution, redefining it to accommodate a flexible exchange between the two sides, alternatively giving and taking.

The Akademie Schloss Solitude Yearbook 12 – Because of Solitude

KK: The Akademie’s residency programme is open to applicants worldwide – not only to visual artists, performers and writers but also to scholars, scientists, economists etc.; anyone who is thinking laterally about their practice and wishes to engage with other like (or unlike) minded individuals, programmes or environments. How important is diversity, both culturally and disciplinary, in shaping the residency experience at Solitude? Are these connections maintained after the fellowship period is over?

JBJ: At the end of the nineties, I observed how new artist fellows arriving at Solitude could localize or even classify another artist in a matter of minutes: where did you study, where did you exhibit or perform, which biennale etc? Too fast, too easy… This was one of the reasons why we founded the art, science & business program. When artists, scientists, engineers or managers are speaking together, they have to integrate the differences that oblige them to explain from the very basics how they work and think. In such an exchange, nothing is taken for granted. The notion of diversity is also related to the presence of fellows from all over the world having very different conditions of life and artistic production. In that manner, Solitude is really international and aware of cultural diversity.

The question of the connections between the fellows is another one, and for us a crucial point: the best way to evaluate the quality of the work done by an artist residency is to check what happened afterwards. Are the former Solitude-fellows successful? Are they in contact with each other? Are they in contact with the institution? In the internal newsletters addressed to our board members or to the local government, this part of the report is one of the most important because its legitimizes our work from an external, objective perspective. Indeed, we receive many mails of former fellows mentioning that Solitude not only provided good material support, but also offered new possibilities of cooperation and friendship.

KK: Have there been many fellows or applicants to the Akademie hailing from the Caribbean? In recent years, many creative platforms have emerged in the region, prioritizing the cultivation of relationships and networks that comprise forward thinkers and progressive institutions. Is there interest on the part of the Akademie to deepen engagement with the Caribbean, and perhaps take part in these exchanges and collaborations?

JBJ: Not so many fellows, I remember four from Cuba and from Jamaica, living at the time in Mexico, in New York and in Europe. Few artists apply from the Caribbean, probably because we are not yet well known over there. But remember this too: We are not a big machine like a ministry or like Goethe Institute with a worldwide network of employees and organizations. We just try to embrace the world with a staff of 11 people, working on 3,500 square meters in a castle nearby Stuttgart! But in short: yes, we are always interested in forming new connections and contacts, including in the Caribbean! Sometimes, not always, these contacts will grow to a real exchange and partnership. Isn’t it the very reason we invited you, Katherine Kennedy, as a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude?

Read the original interview on ARC Magazine here, and see more information about Akademie Schloss Solitude’s open call for applications below:

Call for Applications: Akademie Schloss Solitude

For the fifteenth time, Akademie Schloss Solitude is granting approx. 70 residency fellowships of three to twelve months in duration. More than 1,200 artists from more than 100 countries have developed and advanced projects at the Akademie since its opening in 1990, creating a close-knit, global network of Solitude alumni that expands from year to year. The Akademie persues an intense exchange between artistic and scientific disciplines. With the art, science & business program the transfer of knowledge and experience between these fields can be deepened to create new synergies of creativity, inventiveness and management.

International artists are invited to apply from the following disciplines: Architecture (design, landscape architecture, urban planning), Visual Arts (including performance art), Performing Arts (stage design, dramatic texts, dramaturgy, musical theater, performance, direction, drama, dance), Design (fashion, costume, product and furniture design, visual communication), Literature (essay, criticism, poetry, prose, translation), Music/Sound (interpretation, sound installation, sound performance, composition) and Video/Film/New Media (including video installation, fiction and documentary).

Furthermore, scholars, scientists and professionals from the disciplines of the Humanities, Social Sciences (with a focus on culture and the politics of space), Economy/Economics (with a focus on urban policy), and Culture & Law (with a focus on authorship) are invited to apply.

At the beginning of a new application round, the Akademie stipulates a new central topic within the context of its art, science & business program which is designed to include not only fellows from all disciplines, but external specialists too. The Akademie views art, science and business as complementary rather than separate activities, which interact dynamically and encourage mutual productivity. To this end, fellows are selected in the fields of art, science & business, internal and public events are organized and publications are released. All fellows – artists, scientists and economists – are free to participate in projects related to the central topic.

Following a suggestion by the current jury chairman, Kaiwan Mehta, the Akademie will be organizing its art, science & business program around the central topic Biography and the Production of Space. With this central topic, the Akademie would like to initiate a comprehensive interdisciplinary discussion about the production of spaces – which can be physical, virtual or imaginary– as an individual as well as social phenomena with implications in economy, art, literature, and sciences.

Persons up to 35 or if older who have completed a university or college degree within the past five years are welcome to apply. Currently enrolled university or college students (at the time of application) will not be considered for selection. Each fellowship recipient is granted Euro 1,100 per month, in addition to free lodging.

For additional information on the residency programme, application process and selection jury members, see the Akademie Schloss Solitude website here. Application deadline is Friday, October 31, 2014 (Postmark/End of Online Application).

As of July 1, applicants will find all information, be able to register and download the application form or apply online on the application website.

ARC Magazine announces Katherine Kennedy’s Fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude

September 19, 2014September 23, 2014Leave a comment

ARC Magazine shares Katherine Kennedy‘s first report from Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. Katherine was selected on behalf of Fresh Milk to participate in the ResSupport Fellowship programme offered by Res Artis. During her 3 month tenure, she will be a resident correspondent, interacting with the personnel and fellows, conducting interviews, and extending the wealth of the Akademie’s programming to our community. Read more below:

The best way I can describe both the past few and upcoming months would be transitionary. Working in the arts is flexible by nature, but at times it feels even more crucial to be receptive to change when operating in the context of the Caribbean and contributing to platforms such as ARC Magazine and Fresh Milk. The missions of both initiatives overlap and synergize in their commitment to maintaining critical, creative spaces of encounter, acting as ‘cultural labs‘ whose agendas surpass nationalistic thinking with the larger, holistic good of the region in mind. These are ambitious goals that both ARC and Fresh Milk rise and adapt to in a number of ways on an ongoing basis, and goals that can only be achieved through open mindedness to new ideas, new people and new environments.

I applied in the capacity of Assistant to Director at Fresh Milk to the ResSupport Fellowship programme offered by Res Artis, a worldwide network of over 400 residencies of which Fresh Milk is a member. The fellowship is described as an “exchange program of cultural workers at residency centres…[providing] the occasion to increase organisational consciousness, strengthen the bonds, and also generate knowledge and cultural sharing among the members of the Res Artis network.”

These ideas of exchange and knowledge transfer immediately resonated, having always been at the heart of our work, and I was honoured to have been selected to travel to Stuttgart, Germany to be hosted for three months (September 1 – December 1, 2014) by Akademie Schloss Solitude. In addition to gaining insight into how this prestigious residency centre is run and fostering relationships with the staff and resident artists, I will be acting as a correspondent on behalf of Fresh Milk and ARC, sharing information on the Caribbean contemporary art scene and in turn extending my experiences and information gained at the Akademie with our networks throughout the region. I’m aiming to ensure that this journey is not a drop in a pond, but can lead to future collaboration and be mutually enriching for all involved – large goals seem to come with the territory, but the very existence of opportunities such as this is proof that there is a real desire on both sides for meaningful engagement.

The transition from Barbados to Germany is taking place, and even as I take the time to orient myself here I am eager to absorb as much as I can, having hit the ground running. But while this shift in my location and commitments will be more than a drop in a pond in the greater scheme of things, it has still produced ripples in the daily functioning of both initiatives I am representing.

While I am abroad, Barbadian artist and regular volunteer at Fresh Milk, Versia Harris, will be stepping in and interning as Assistant to Director in training, exemplifying the importance of investing in the development of emerging artists and equipping them with the necessary skills to confidently enter professional environments. Similarly, ARC has recently inducted three interns into its fold – Katherine Agard, Varala Maraj and Natalie Willis – who have each been applying their talents and doing a fantastic job at working cohesively with ARC’s core team. Witnessing the domino effect of knowledge transfer that is already branching out from all sides feels very special to me, and can only stretch further and further as time passes and each new experience gets added to the mix.

Transition is also a form of evolution. New ideas, new people, new environments; all of these continue to come together to spell progress, growth and fresh prospects in ways that we envision reaching far beyond my tenure in Germany, with the input of so many incredible individuals and institutions working in tandem to create and circulate new possibilities. In this spirit, I’ll finish by sharing Akademie Schloss Solitude’s current call for applications to their next residency cycle below – perhaps it will be the first point of departure from this fellowship for new discoveries and opportunities for others:

Call for Applications: Akademie Schloss Solitude

For the fifteenth time, Akademie Schloss Solitude is granting approx. 70 residency fellowships of three to twelve months in duration. More than 1.200 artists from more than 100 countries have developed and advanced projects at the Akademie since its opening in 1990, creating a close-knit, global network of Solitude alumni that expands from year to year. The Akademie pursues an intense exchange between artistic and scientific disciplines. With the art, science & business program the transfer of knowledge and experience between these fields can be deepened to create new synergies of creativity, inventiveness and management.

International artists are invited to apply from the following disciplines: Architecture (design, landscape architecture, urban planning), Visual Arts (including performance art), Performing Arts (stage design, dramatic texts, dramaturgy, musical theater, performance, direction, drama, dance), Design (fashion, costume, product and furniture design, visual communication), Literature (essay, criticism, poetry, prose, translation), Music/Sound (interpretation, sound installation, sound performance, composition) and Video/Film/New Media (including video installation, fiction and documentary).

Furthermore, scholars, scientists and professionals from the disciplines of the Humanities, Social Sciences (with a focus on culture and the politics of space), Economy/Economics (with a focus on urban policy), and Culture & Law (with a focus on authorship) are invited to apply.

For additional information on the residency programme, application process and selection jury members, see the Akademie Schloss Solitude website here, or visit our Opportunities page.

Application deadline is Friday, October 31, 2014 (Postmark/End of Online Application).

As of July 1, applicants will find all information, be able to register and download the application form or apply online on the Application website.

Unrecognised Affinities: Reflections from Videobrasil

December 18, 2013May 20, 2015Leave a comment

The founding director of The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., Annalee Davis, was invited to participate in the 18th International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil – 30 Years + Southern Panoramas in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Videobrasil has established itself as one of the most important organizations for video and contemporary art practices in the geopolitical South and included a cross section of curators and critics from arts institutions worldwide, and artists largely from the global South. Davis presented in the 3rd Focus group of the festival’s public programming, which centered on artist residencies. The following is an edited version of her presentation ‘Unrecognised Affinities’ delivered at the panel titled ‘Hospitality and the Politics of Mobility’, originally published on ARC Magazine’s website.

Panel on Hospitality and the Politics of Mobility. Participants from L-R: Annalee Davis, Aaron Cezar, Amilcar Packer and Koyo Kouoh. Image courtesy of Sabrina Moura.

I was asked to speak about my work as a creative activist in Barbados and the formation of the artist led initiative called The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., of which I am the founding director. As a tutor at the Barbados Community College in the BFA programme, I decided some years ago to respond to the fact that none of our graduates continued making work after graduation. This is, in part, because there is not a developed creative economy that can provide a supportive space for emerging practitioners. Fresh Milk was born in 2011 to foster young talent and is named such because it is located on a dairy farm, as well as relating to the act of women turning their blood into milk to nurture their young.

The network responded to a specific local need to harness the talent of our young creatives – to be a safety net to catch artists as they fall into the real world after art school. Now, two and a half years later, graduates are continuing to make work because Fresh Milk is opening up opportunities and doors of exchange.

Fresh Milk is located on the premises of a former plantation built in the mid-1600s. It has been functioning as a dairy farm for several decades. My home and studio are located on the farm, and I have turned my studio into Fresh Milk’s headquarters. Due to the island’s brutal history rooted in indentureship and the slave trade, the physical location of Fresh Milk has raised concerns as to whether it is a legitimate or appropriate setting to carry out its work. Traditionally, the plantation was an exclusive venue, hospitable only to a white elite planter class who oversaw the inhumane treatment of an enslaved and indentured population.

The Fresh Milk Studio. Photograph by Mark King.

I am interested in this debate about the plantation as a fixed space, defined perpetually by conflict and division. I see this location as a site for investigation; an environment which I am unpacking from the ground up. By literally digging into the soil to find ceramic remains, reading through documents related to the former plantation, including conveyances, wills and deeds from the early nineteenth century, I am thinking about the potential for transformation and reconciliation. Through creative intervention via my own practice as well as the development of critical programming at Fresh Milk, the historical divisions within the plantation are reconsidered.

The idea of transformation is linked to hospitality, which originates from the Latin word ‘hospes’ meaning “guest” or “stranger’. I am concerned about the stranger or enemy among us and within our national boundaries, the region and the wider world. Certainly, there has been much debate within the insular Caribbean about belonging and ownership, which plays itself out most disturbingly at many of our national borders. There is a precedent of xenophobia which has come to define how Caribbean people think about citizenship and the landscape. The failure of CARICOM to provide a conduit for real integration after forty years of operation attests to this. For real change to occur, we need to be hospitable to ourselves first, work to ‘to open ourselves up, share ourselves out’ with the stranger in our midst, which we can do through the arts, creating safe, critical settings for exploration, innovation, connection, excellence and production.

Fresh Milk reacts to our needs at the moment in Barbados and the wider Caribbean by building a robust creative community within the local context. Our geographic consideration of the Caribbean is always shifting. The normative definition is the archipelago that stretches from The Bahamas in the North, to Trinidad in the South, moving on to Suriname and the Guianas. Its extension into the coastal rim of Central and South America and out to the diasporic outposts including Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Vancouver, NYC etc is evidence of the Caribbean as a broad and dynamic area.

Annalee Davis introducing the Fresh Milk Map of Caribbean Art Spaces. Image courtesy of Sabrina Moura.

What is radical about this notion of hospitality in our Caribbean context, is the relationship to the history of plantations. By transforming this territory once grounded in hostility and prejudice into a welcoming, creative, critical arena, Fresh Milk is indeed a defiant undertaking. Our programming works in opposition to the traumatic history of abandonment and points to new possibilities by offering harmonious acts rather than ones of obstruction. Instead of reading Fresh Milk’s presence on this site as problematic, we propose an alternative reading, and suggest that an adjustment is both necessary and possible.

I see the work I am doing as an artist, unpacking and redefining the plantation, as work which is altering the very chemistry of our own soil. This practice is rooted in scientific ideas around phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is the removal of toxins from the earth by cultivating plants whose roots have the capacity to extract toxins from the soil, thereby allowing the soil to be replenished and to grow something again.

I believe that we have the ability and the responsibility to alter the course history, contributing to a healthy cultural ecosystem by nurturing creative production and producers. By establishing the Fresh Milk platform and executing its programming, functioning locally, regionally and internationally with inclusive and open projects, we are building relationships with other human beings and offering a real connection to a known locale of isolation and privilege that has been timed out of opportunity and significance.

Being hospitable in the historical context of the Caribbean is a radical gesture. To nurture one another, to consciously reject what we were taught by the colonial past and a consumer oriented present, to choose to convert these historical sites of abuse, torture and neglect into sanctuaries that revel in the creative imagination, to take care of and look after the emerging talent; these are all revolutionary actions. I have faith in the capacity we all have as human beings to envision and manifest alternate possibilities through the forging of relationships with others which may offer something beyond perpetual conflict.

The building of the Colleen Lewis Reading Room, which provides free and accessible research material to the Barbadian public, is a critical statement in a region where reading is not always a popular activity. This is a testament to the powers of the colonial system where bars for the consumption of rum were more common on the plantation than libraries. The availability of the reading room allows a way for us to think about using knowledge and scholarship to open and challenge minds, inspiring intellect while developing new modes of thinking.

The Colleen Lewis Reading Room. Photograph by Dondré Trotman.

The interactive Fresh Milk Map of Caribbean Art Spaces contests the ways in which the hegemonic powers historically segmented the region linguistically and created artificial boundaries to separate us from fully understanding our similarities. This is a myth and one that should be denounced categorically from a cultural and political perspective. The construction of this virtual map reinforces linkages across linguistic and geographic divides in the region, insisting that we are indeed interconnected.

Fresh Milk is building connections with other human beings through residencies, the Colleen Lewis Reading Room, the Map of Caribbean Art Spaces and its activities, contributing to our goal of transformation – all the while believing that we can alter the chemistry of our own soil, creating new paradigms of thinking and behaving, engaging in hospitable acts, or the most radical gesture of all – loving each other.

I close with a quote from the author Theodore Zeldin which inspires what we do at Fresh Milk – “The meeting of ideas which have never come together before…the art of making life meaningful and beautiful, which involves finding connections between what seems to have no connection, linking people and place, desires and memories…discovering unrecognized affinities between humans holds out the prospect of reconciliations and adventures which have so far seemed impossible.”

See the original article on ARC Magazine.

ARC Magazine shares ‘Reporting from Sustainable Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’

December 12, 2013May 20, 2015Leave a comment

The second conference in the ‘Sustainable Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’ series took place on December 3-4, 2013 at Iniva, London. This conference brought together participants from the Caribbean and its diaspora who are involved in the arts and influential creative initiatives, including founding director of FRESH MILK Annalee Davis, and highlighted social, historical and financial challenges that they face in trying to nurture healthy artistic communities in the region. Charl Landvreugd reports from the conference exclusively for ARC Magazine.

Sustainable Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean conference held at INIVA. Images courtesy of Annalee Davis.

Excerpt:

As the mark of success in art seems to be related to public engagement, establishing links through existing spaces to broaden local audiences on artistic, critical and financial levels is paramount. Part of this can be achieved through carefully archiving Caribbean lived experience. As an example of this, Joy Gregory started/is starting up a residency in the former house of fashion designer Trevor Owens in Jamaica, providing a way into understanding this experience. At the same time, according to Therese Hadchity, the local and historical context is being transcended by artists like Sheena Rose, Ewan Atkinson and Alicia Alleyne, and is being picked up in other parts of the world. A new hybrid globalised subject is emerging with mixed sensibilities. Jynell Osborne made this clear by speaking about diversity in heritage and how this affects social and political issues in a country like Guyana. “We have to recognise where cultures come together and where they stay apart in Guyana, and by extension in the Caribbean. Part of building a strong society is building a strong culture that is sustainable.” Tying back to the production of a critical discourse, this seems to be done more by writers than visual artists in smaller countries. Why is that?

One thing that the speakers and audience agreed on was Petrona Morisson’s sentiment that the Caribbean and its diaspora should not repeat patterns of exclusion in our effort to build a sustainable art community. Annalee Davis’ presentation on the initiative Fresh Milk is seen as one of the ways in which talent can be nurtured in our own geographical space. She made a case for the fourth sector model of social economy in light of the lack of funds, creating wealth by means of nurturing creative talent within the region. This, the panel agreed, is a revolutionary act. By first working within the local space and sustaining creative process, expansion to include all of the region is anticipated. The question of an understandable art language for everybody may be a consequence of this way of working. What the impact of this will be outside and inside of academia can only be imagined at this point. Who defines and critiques history, and is history in the way of the future? This was asked by Ozkan Golpinar when he explained the way decisions on funding are being made in the West.

Read the full article on ARC Magazine here.

Panelists and supporters at Sustainable Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean conference held at INIVA.

Caribbean Linked II Artist Blogs: Robin de Vogel

September 27, 2013May 20, 2015Leave a comment

Dutch/Aruban artist Robin de Vogel shares her experience during Caribbean Linked II, a residency programme at Ateliers ’89, Aruba. She describes her need to appropriate and settle into a studio space, accumulating ‘objets trouvés’ as a part of her creative process. As she carved out this space for herself, she also discovered where she fit in the environments constructed by her fellow resident artists. Through their time together she noticed the closing of a gap between the Caribbean islands, building “a bridge where only creative-exchange is accepted as toll fare.”

Robin de Vogel marking the Ateliers ’89 van

Planting Long-distance Seeds

After the first breakfast with all of us at the table, eating while debating politics and manners of campaigning in the Caribbean, I walked through the blue and yellow halls of the Ateliers in pursuit of a good spot to start working. Sofia had set up shop in the far left corner of the first room, one of the larger and lighter spaces in the building. With some of the space already being semi occupied, I moved some tables around to figure out where I’d want to put down roots for the coming two weeks of our residency. I strategically placed myself facing away from the doorway, as I know myself to be continuously curious and therefore easily distracted by everything around me.

About two months ago, two weeks prior to my graduation show, the time had come to clean up the studio space I had inhabited for the past year. I felt like a snail without its shell after everything was moved around, cleaned up, thrown out or saved by taking it home. All the different materials I’d managed to accumulate during the semester to “one day” be of use and my ever-growing collage on the wall. Pictures, postcards, newspaper clippings, objets trouvés, souvenirs and film stills.

Studio space snapshot 2012

They function as tangible trains of thought being slowed down and captured on the walls around me, as though the content of my brain is lightly hugging me.

Appropriating a studio space as my own is crucial for my sanity. During the first few days of the residency I started a small investigation into the studio spaces of the other resident artists. It was exciting to see each individual formulate their workspace in their own style. My own ideal ‘two-week-working-space’ needed a mascot of some sort, sooner rather than later. I promised myself to make, find, steal or collect one object a day, for a week. It led to a small altar.

A mascot a day keeps the doctor away, Robin de Vogel, 2013

As the days progressed I began to realise the vast significance a project like Caribbean Linked II carries within the development of Caribbean art today. The project is not only about establishing a direct link between ten young Caribbean artists during their time in Aruba, but it forms a direct bridge between the islands, a bridge where only creative-exchange is accepted as toll fare. Upon asking curator Holly Bynoe why she believes in this project so very much she answered: “We are planting seeds”.

Image by Shirley Rufin

The work I made during the residency spoke about our ‘reach’ as a human being. Our reach can be categorized as something tangible and measurable like a radius or a circumference, but at the same time our reach can be something elusive and invisible. An opinion exchanged about a work in progress can lead to a complete overhaul in someone’s point of view. Hence the reach of that particular dialogue is immeasurable and untold, as is the importance of the seeds planted during Caribbean Linked II. The elements I take home with me from the continuous exchange that took place during those two weeks are undeniable. I have become aware of a much broader range of artistic possibilities within the Caribbean, various residency programs, projects and creative institutes that I am extremely excited about. Getting to know these beautiful human beings from all over the Caribbean and sharing my island with them makes the oceanic barrier feel so much smaller. Ultimately it leads to an amplified sense of connectivity amongst the different islands as well as an increased feeling of personal responsibility to promote and unite in our diversity.

Image by Shirley Rufin

Image by the artist

About Robin de Vogel:

Robin de Vogel is a Dutch artist raised on the island of Aruba. She participated in photography, drawing, painting and installation art workshops provided by Ateliers ’89. In 2008, she moved back to The Netherlands to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Ceramics Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She also engages in various collaborative projects and exhibitions in Europe and the Caribbean. Robin’s work often takes the form of installations that revolve around the sensibility of the viewer. Her pieces aim to serve as a subtle disruption of the daily routine. Currently, Robin is completing her exam year and is preparing to pursue a Master of Fine Arts Degree after the summer.

CARIBBEAN LINKED II is a residency programme and exhibition organized by Ateliers ’89 Foundation in collaboration with ARC Inc. and The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc. and funded by the Mondriaan Foundation. The programme took place from August 25th through September 6th, 2013 in Oranjestad, Aruba.

fresh milk barbados

Critical. Creative. Fresh.

Category: Arc