artists in residence antwerp

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air

Antwerpen

is

an

international residence project for ar tists.

air Antwerpen is more than a receptive workplace for artists from abroad.
The organisation wishes to profile itself as a breeding ground for contemporary art, a place where art is developed and where artistic research is pursued. AIR Antwerpen offers no exhibition platform for visual arts as such. The organisation is active within the national and international visual arts network and undertakes collaborative ventures which can result in research oriented co-production. Thanks to its setting in a city with a rich cultural history and an effervescent contemporary art scene, AIR Antwerpen is capable of initiating a spontaneous dialogue between past and present, and the local and global.

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air Antwerpen is first and foremost a place where art is developed, and where reflection and artistic
research is undertaken.

air Antwerpen offers living and working spaces to:

artists from abroad artists living and working in flanders a collaboration with an artist from abroad who wish to undertake

possible partners in the cultural field, co-productions and related presentations curators

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The organisation assists the residents with substansive and whenever possible also technical support with experimental productions. The emphasis within AIR Antwerpen lies in the visual arts. Collaborations with artists from other disciplines or with scientists are also possible. The selection is made by an international Advisory Committee.

Direct applications are not accepted

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Living and work spaces.

In the former lockmasters residence air Antwerpen offers space for 5 furnished living and work spaces with a surface of approximately 30m2. The communal space includes 2 fitted kitchens, a bathroom, a collective work area and a patio.

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In the former lockmans residence, the project has obtained a fabulous post industrial location with the help of the Port of Antwerp. It is located on the border between the old and the new harbour, close to the city centre.
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an artistic impression of the surroundings

photos by Tom Van Camp

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click on names to go to the artists page

artists in residence
Gregory S Maass & Nayoungim Douglas Park
(April - June 2006) (Februari June 2006)

Carla Zaccagnini (April - June 2006) Michael Dans Maija Blafield

(May November 2006) (September December 2006) (September November 2006) (Februari - May 2007)

past residents
Michiel Alberts Christelle Fillod Takahiko Suzuki
(March - August 2005) (June - October 2005) (July - November 2005) (September - Februari 2006)

Billie Zangewa

Nomadic Exposures Seriall Workshop Yuji Watabe Matej Modrinjak

(September - October 2005)

Nathalie Djurberg +

(September 2005 - Februari 2006) (November 2005 - Februari 2006)

future collaborations with HIAP, Kulturbunker

Frankfurt & AIR Laboratory Warshau

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Gregory S Maass & Nayoungim

1967, Haagen, Germany, lives and works in Berlin 1966, Seoul, South-Korea, lives and works in Berlin

statement: My idols are Elvis Presley and Robert Filliou and I am still in their debt. Precision and hope. The drawing as a Tour de Force in general, I am developing events and incidents. The process as a result. The event of the collision of proportions and ways of drawing, of concepts and things. E.g. a series of uncomfortable impacts of environment and art piece, the art piece wants to survive. The human being, a complex molecule, similar to a cloud. Especially in the ambient drawings I develop spaces and sceneries in which dramas unroll, among the above mentioned drawing elements. Development in the process. Another series of drawings, in which a crystalline pattern of a Bezier Spline describes a surface, a peripatetic unfolds and is humanized. There are 36 different ways of interpreting a piece of art, more difficult are good comparisons. Nothing is like it seems and that is good. Abstraction as humor and abstraction of humor. In constant need of structures and methods, is irony a medium of erasing not of construction. Irony celebrates the emptiness, it does not build a basis on which one could build something, its a tool of coping with the contemporary. The thought as an art work. My art works epitomizes an inflation of references.

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Douglas Park
1972, United Kingdom

Policy

Despite being almost excuses to enable and justify development and use of ideas Ive had anyway and getting something done, in many ways my work is illustration in reverse; most finalisation and outlet being through working closely with visual artists, sometimes on collaborative joint-venture projects, exploring their approaches, intentions, concerns and end-results, as well as mine, often influencing each others input and ultimate outcome; also, although originally a visual artist myself, before becoming more active with writing, I remain mainly connected to and involved with art-scenes, while my literary output heavily references and resembles the production, content, appearance, perception and description of artworks. Unlike conventional descriptive and critical essays (which I attempted in the past), they could perhaps (at least in principle) stand up alone, apart from original purpose and survive in their own right. In these works, an already existing, accepted and credible familiarity, but newly emerging and unknown strangeness in the physical form and impact of language, imagery and scenarios conveyed generates and enforces a reality of inescapable conditions and circumstances (environment, process, quality) which takes over.

At all levels, a sensorial physicality is brought about (in words, iconography and overall experience) containing nature and artifice, culturally elitist and down-to-earth material, minor triviality and serious importance, helpless passivity and active involvement, moral benevolence and harmful exploitation, deliberate intention and unaccountable inevitability. Both subject-matter and embodiment possess equal-measures of: technological and scientific precision and function; exquisite grandeur, finery and high aesthetics; sedate and intense everyday real-life; the fantastic, magical, hallucinogenic, visionary, bizarre, exotic, dreamlike and imaginary. Other than by anthropomorphic metaphor and symbolism used and issues addressed, human presence and activity is usually excluded until nearly incidental, except where vaguely implied and appearing fleetingly in cliched phrasing. Dynamic Inventory / Itemised Miasma Douglas Park

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Michael Dans
1971, Verviers, Belgium, lives and works in Luik

Michael Dans dort tous les jours jusqu midi et ensuite les minutes qui sgrainent pour sa vie prive et son travail ne sont quune suite dincongruits qui, quand elles se croisent, plongent autrui dans la perplexit. F.Curlet

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Thats all folks 2003 70 oiseaux mcaniques peinture murale

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Small noise, 2003 Bois color, mtal Centre dart et du paysage Vassivire

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King size, 2001 Chaussures pointure 50, scies main

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Looping, 2001 Bois Venise, 49biennale E2N

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Maija Blafield
1973, Helsinki, Finland, lives and works in Helsinki

Maija Blafield studied at the Helsinki Academy, at the Drama Academy (scriptwriter course). She did solo exhibition in the Academy of Fine Arts and in the Galleria Huuto. She makes mixed media installations, prints and video about different topics. She made for example a film about Marcel Bloemendal, a schizofrenic man, who is travelling around Europe in order to save the world. All her work have something to do with the reality of objects and how the change in another environment. Things we know become unrecognisable after a little intervention. The small things in life, the special moments, is something she also focusing on.

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Maija Blfields lost and found office Galleria Huuto, Helsinki, february 2005 Installation with photographs on the walls (300cm x 80cm), sand and stockings, found notes and letters found from the streets. Saving the World was also screened during the exhibition at the gallerys backroom.

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Maija Blfields lost and found office

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Maija Blfields lost and found office

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Map of the World Plasticine on wall 5x3m, 2005 Small Heaven Young Artists biennale at Kunsthalle, Helsinki 2005

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Satellite Picture Colour photograph on aluminium 120cm, 2005 Small Heaven Young Artists biennale at Kunsthalle, Helsinki 2005

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Sciencefictionmovie
DVD

The science fiction esthetics are about the phenomena where elements unreal and strange to everyday life are presented to exist, but still remaining something unknown. The existence of these elements are presented dependent of capability to see them and believe them to be real. In this work the term science fiction refers to situation, where elements familiar to ones environment are suddenly seen in an unexpected and unfamiliar way and form and that way create an association different from original - and becoming something unknown. Scienfictionmovie tells about mundane everyday life and the universality of the basics of the life on this planet of ours. This is a work in proggress, to be finished 2006-2007 during artists residencies in Antwerpen, Belgium and Benin, Wester Africa.

I give an example: A picture of an unindentified object, which can be taken where ever - at my home or on the other side of the world. At the same time this object is in reality very universal and recognizable all around the world . In this example picture is seen an unidentifiend object, which is a piece of chewing gum I found on a wall of a motel in Texas, US.

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Billie Zangewa
1973, Blantyre, Malawi, lives and works in Johannesburg

Billie Zangewa graduated in Fine Arts at Rhodes University, South Africa. Billie Zangewa remembers her mother working with textiles and experimented with sewing and embroidery while still at primary school, later developing an interest in fashion and the eccentric designers of the fashion industry. At art school she used various media but when she came across some silk swatches, it was a transformative moment. The luminous, sumptuous quality of silk, with its changing light and colour intensities, attracted Zangewa who realised it potential as a medium for her imaginative embodiments of personal urban experience. Zangewa says: Silk has a fabulous reflective quality, but at the same time I think it is quite modern and edgy... the fabric is also important in defining my obsession with fashion & surface... the surface is as important as the thing you put on it. Her initial work with silk resulteerde in a series of handbags with abstracted narratieve scnes of Johannesburg city, the developing into two-dimensional narrative collages. Combining text, pop references and a range of effect including embroidery, beading, and pleating, she exploreer modern city life via personal stories pages in an intimate urban diary. The vulnerability and innocente of the handreiking, sewing technique and edges create a tension with the opulent qualities of material.

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Nathalie Djurberg
1978, Lysekil, Sweden, lives and works in Berlin

Nathalie Djurbergs world is a grotesque combination of innocence, perversion, violence and (black) humour, moulded in plasticine and animated with, the basic but laborious, step motion technique. Disturbing yet irresistible, her childlike animated paintings deal with harsh issues such as human beings inclination towards evil, but also affirm lifes beauty. Poised between melancholy and irony, desire and despair Djurbergs work which is visually influenced by Western pictorial and cinematographic traditions, Eastern European animations as well s Japanese and American cartoons generates a weird feeling which is heightened by the soundtrack created by the musician Hans Berg in close collaboration with the artist.

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Michiel Alberts
1970,the Netherlands, lives and works in Antwerp

The work that Michiel Alberts presents in AIR Antwerpen consists of photographic portraits and landscapes, collected in a book. The starting point of this work is the monologue Dreck by Robert Schneider. In this play, written in 1991, an illegal Iraqi rose seller wrestles with the fears and prejudices of the country in which he is staying. The fear of the population has become so strongly instilled in him that it turns against him. From this alienating perspective, the monologue becomes increasingly bitter and hopeless. This piece, played by Michiel Alberts, was previewed last June at the Frascati theatre in Amsterdam. The visual section presented in AIR Antwerpen is not an illustration of the text. Michiel Alberts distilled the subject matter and entered into a dialogue with the city of Antwerp. In his book of photographs, he composes the portraits and landscapes into a rhythm. Because of the sequence, a world develops that transcends the individual, a space in which fear and loneliness predominate. The work is part of the final project of the DasArts postgraduate course in Amsterdam.

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presentation Michiel Alberts at Air Antwerpen, 27/08/05

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presentation Michiel Alberts at Air Antwerpen, 27/08/05

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presentation Michiel Alberts at Air Antwerpen, 27/08/05

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Christelle Fillod
1974, FR

Christelle Fillod is in residence at AIR from june to october 2005. During her stay in AIR, she took the benefit of the location in the port of Antwerpen to reconnect with video and photo material that was made during a project developed on freighter. She is working on a book that should be finalized as an artist book.
The presentation of the book will be in AIR on the 17th of november 2005.

Christelle Fillod is an visual artist and performer. She graduated from the Beaux Arts National de Lyon and was invited in Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains. She created site specific installation, video work, performances. Her work is the emerging experience on a research about perception: On how a specific reality is given to our senses, on how do we travel through the layer of the senses, on how to perceive outside of a predetermined culture, on how to move the point of assembly, on how to expand the world from within. She has worked and collaborated with artists such as Gary Hill, Florence Menini, Vanessa Briggs, Christine DeSmedt, Meg Stuart, Sachiyo Takahashi, Yukiko Shinozaki. Her works and performances have been exhibited internationally.

YOU CAN FOLLOW HER RESIDENCE THROUGH THE WEB SITE: W W W. A I R A N T W E R P E N. B E

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Takahiko Suzuki
1962, JP

**installation works and collaboration works. He is drifting around the world this 3 years. He is interested in collaboration with artists living in Belgium. The collaboration series is called collaboration between an artist and a space. It looks like his partners one-man show. He makes a special place for partners work. However, the method is various depending on the partner. He doesnt like to be related to one shape. He wants to have three collaborations in Antwerp. 1.Visual artist 2.Experiment music 3.Some specialists He is looking for partners for collaboration in Sep, Oct, Nov 2005. If you have interest or any questions, please send e-mail to: suzuki@nonprofitgallery.com About his collaboration, check here. http://www.nonprofitgallery.com/suzuki/kaizen/flame_e.html His home page is this http://www.nonprofitgallery.com/suzuki It has not been decided yet though he sent the application to acquire the budget. In the worst case, there is no budget. Please let me know if you know any way for that in Antwerp. Also he has a web project. It is links pages of alternative or nonprofit galleries around the world. http://www.nonprofitgallery.com If you have any information about that in Belgium, please let him know.

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nomadicExposures
BE

nomadicExposures en AIR : an encounter that was a chance occurrence its a fact that the nature of the place of invitation determines at first to a large extent the praxis of nomadicExposures which must not be regarded as a collective but as a cooperation without any fixed program. Nevertheless the walks and the conversations are not only triggers of the communication but also the entries to each new project (workstations) which receives form during practice.

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Seriall Mobile Serigraphy Workshop

FR

SERIALL is a mobile serigraphy (silk screen) workshop led by three young French artists. In their transformed truck, they are travelling throughout Europe with the objective to realize projects with local artists or students, in search of the European cultural identity. Exchange your knowledge and skills on this technique, and share your views on different visual cultures! You can do a short project like printing on canvas, T-shirts, stone, stickers..., or, for motivated people, SERIALL also offers the possibility of taking part in the project that it will develop in AIR Antwerpen until October 15th.

Find out more about SERIALL at: http://seriall.elshopo.com

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Yuji Watabe
1974, JP

Thinking about My Work People are alive in the passage of time. The physical time-axis flows equally for everyone yet ones perception of the time-axis is subjective. An individuals thoughts and emotions can lengthen or shorten their experience of the time-axis. An Escape from Painting Drawing on the wall released me from the heavy burden of painting. I searched for a way to articulate the fleeting existence of things. I could not achieve this using the traditional methods of oil painting on canvas. When I drew directly on the wall, the drawing became a temporary recording of the subject. Drawing the subject then became a way to extinguish it. Method of Drawing The figures are always drawn using only a pencil. All tones are made by the lines of the pencil. These lines clearly describe the amount of time spent creating these drawings. I choose to represent the figures in a monochromatic grey to avoid the subjective implications and associations people have with color. Black and white gives the images a ghostlike quality that helps the viewer relate to the concepts of absence and disappearance in the work. The source for the drawings is a photograph. Photography catches a moment in time. Drawing is a way to prolong that moment within a new subjective time axis. Choice of Subjects I am interested in the way people appear and disappear. People meet and separate. After the separation one remains in the memory of the other. The time I spend talking to my friends is very important to me. After that time passes, these intimate experiences remain in my mind as memories. I draw my friends on the wall in an effort to express these memories, a recreation of that special time.

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Matej Modrinjak
1980, Maribor, Slovenia, lives and works in Antwerp

A short draft of the project Alphakanal: Alphakanal is a platform for interdisciplinary artistic Activity. It started in 2002 in the Academy in Vienna. The presentations, performances and actions are streamed live into the web. The project is supported by the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. I would like to prepare the project Alphakanal in Belgium. A workshop-like event with different participants that will last five days long. To the project are invited Academy of fine Arts Vienna, Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen, HGK Basel and others. The theme of the workshop is art scene. We will discuss different art models, art market, founding of projects. Compare the countries (example of Austria as a centralised system, example of Belgium as a dispersed system) and figure out the good things within diverse systems. Alphakanal agenda: Monday, Tuesday In first two days members of the Alphakanal project will set up a studio where the theme will be discussed and streamed into the web. Some people will be send to different cities in Belgium to gather information and get know more about galleries, museums, art centrums and other art related institutions in order to get more transparent view on the art scene that is going on in Belgium. Wednesday, Thursday The studio will be a platform where points of view will be exchanged between students of art, artists, theorists, gallery owners, other art related people and internet audience. Friday Making a summary of the project, the last streaming and Late night show (final party for all participants involved in the project) At the moment the Alphakanal team is being selected (7 participants from the academy in Vienna that will come to Belgium). The detailed agenda will be set in the ongoing month. Some links on the web: http://www.aplhakanal.net/ http://www.akbild.ac.at/cvk/?I=de&app=searchsite&s=alphakanal&x=0&y=0 http://medien.akbild.ac.at/alphakanal/

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Carla Zaccagnini
1973, Buenos Aires, Argentina, lives and works in Sao Paolo, Brazil

Carla Zaccagnini By Fernanda Albuquerque Carla Zaccagnini is a versatile artist who uses a multiplicity of materials, techniques and ideas, and the most diverse resources. As the artist exercises an interrogative approach, her work incites a similar attentiveness in the observer. Percurso tico [optical journey] (2005), an intervention recently developed at the Pinacoteca do Estado de So Paulo, involved a group of mirrors that allowed the public to observe one of the paintings from the institutions collection on another floor. Considerable motivation was required to discover what this work was about, since the painting in the mirrors much like the questions arising from the work itself was not immediately obvious to the observer. Experience and contemplation where not an easy task, nor were they ment to be. Jogo de memria [memory game] (2004) is comprised of a set of 36 similar pictures, among which the player must find 18 matching pairs a difficult task. The work proposes an exercise which we are not used to nowadays. Most often, we just train ourselves not to see, explains Zaccagnini. She usually describes her work as enticements, or stimuli for the viewer to question what is seen and to reflect on issues such as cultural public policies. Especially in Brazil, where the art institutions are extremely fragile, it is very easy to point out imperfections, says the young artist, who has been living in So Paulo for the last 24 years. What I try to do is to transform these limits and imperfections into material for my work. This is what she did, for example, when she developed a project on Brazilian contemporary art at the Centro de Arte Wilfredo Lam in Cuba. Her proposal was to donate a selection of books on Brazilian art to the institutions library. Zaccagninis multiplicity can be observed not only in her production; she is also a member of the editorial board of Brazilian magazine Nmero and writes for other publications, such as Art Nexus and Arte y Parte. In addition, she was assistant curator of the So Paulo Museum of Modern Art and was recently one of a group of curators of Farsites, an exhibition in the inSite-05 programme. These activities dont seem to play a secondary role in Zaccagninis performance; rather, they are in dialogue with her own production of artworks. Published in Contemporary Magazine Annual, London, January 2006

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PARTNERS

Capacete Entretenimentos, Rio de Janeiro Platform Garanti, Istanbul

AIR Antwerpen enjoys the support of:

The City of Antwerp

The Port of Antwerp

The Flemish Region

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Events

07-12-2006: Sarah & Charles, Burckaan Gungu, Artist Talk in samenwerking met kunstenfestival 0090 05-12-2006: Hans Wuyts, Emre Erkael, Artist Talk in samenwerking met kunstenfestival 0090 02-12-2006 11-02-2007: Maija Blafield in het SMAK 26-10-2006: Artist Talk Michal Dans 28-09-2006: Presentatie Christina Meisner 10-09-2006: OPEN STUDIOS 26-08-2006: OPEN AIR festival met Mauro Pawlowski 29-06-2006: Boekpresentatie Gagarin #13 door Wilfried Huet 27-06-2006: Artist Talk Douglas Park 01-06-2006: Artist Talk Lieven Paelinck 16-05-2006: Artist Talk Carla Zaccagnini 25-04-2006: Curator Talk Jaakko Rustanius 09-03-2006: Artist Talk Jochem Vanden Ecker 28-02-2006: Artist Talk Gregory Maass & Nayoungim 16-02-2006: Curator Talk Max Henry 04-01-2005: Matej Modrinjak: Living Room #4 14-12-2005: Artist Talk Yuji Watabe 09-12-2005: Matej Modrinjak: Living Room # 3 17-11-2005: Christelle Fillod: The Coil of a Snake: boekpresentatie 27-10-2005: Takahiko Suzuki: Show the Flag, presentatie 25-10-2005: Nomadic Exposures -10-2005: Start Posterproject AIR Antwerpen 05-10-2005: Seriall: Open Workshop in Serigraphy 29-05-2005: Artist Talk Christelle Fillod 27-08-2005: Presentatie Michiel Alberts

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