Open Call for participation in exhibition-residency FOUNDATION

FOUNDATION is a proposal for a new community formed by strangers, that will build its own space and its own bonds. In seven days. Without communicating with the outside world. Without leaving the gallery.

FOUNDATION invites artists, curators, architects and/or researchers dealing with urban issues in their practice, to take part. Four participants will be selected by a jury from the pool of applications.

FOUNDATION will award each selected participant (‘founder’) with a travel grant to cover their transport costs to DAS ESSZIMMER – space for art+ in Bonn (GER), provide food for the duration of the event, as well as some production material, and offer an artist fee to each participant.

FOUNDATION will lead to an exhibition consisting on the material generated by the ‘founders’ during the week, as well as the video documentation gathered. The exhibition will open to the public from February 14th - April 14th at DAS ESSZIMMER - space for art+.

APPLY HERE

Deadline: 15th December 23:59 CET

project by METASITU

commissioned by DAS ESSZIMMER – space for art+ (Bonn, GER)

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We don’t know our neighbors by name - most of the times, we don’t even know how they look like. Yet, through social media, we are extremely familiar with the dietary habits of someone who we have never met, and is oceans apart from us. They might not even know we exist, but we feel we are part of their tribe – One of the many tribes we belong to.

Historically, our ‘tribe’ was defined by a specific territory: a landscape inhabited by people who shared rituals, myths, a language, and a zeitgeist. As communities expanded, accommodating larger numbers of people, new group formations appeared; new affiliations; new tribes, and sub-tribes.

Today, as a species, we might be living in denser, and more concentrated nodes, but human communities, more than ever, are transcending geographies, and basing affiliation on a series of shared references: creating connections with fellow humans through what we consume, keeping in touch with lovers scattered across the globe, or joining the diaspora fan-base community of an idol. Telecommunication technologies, the development of transport infrastructure, and global capitalism inform the way we relate to one another through our consumption: Apple Inc, Veganism, Cross fit, World of Warcraft, Burning Man, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Universal Church, Fablabs, Mileage Cards, and Manchester United. New affiliations. New foundations.

Communities of practice, bonds over a shared experience, or solid consumer identities, that establish sets of values, cultural references, rituals, and networks for communication; framing our habitus, our everyday, yet atomized across the world.

These new identitory frameworks are doubtlessly more fluid than previous models, but also require us to reconsider the notion of citizenship and the city; of belonging, and the territory.

How do we build community? How can we bond? What are the foundational elements for affiliation? How do we establish kinship beyond the capitalist and telecommunication frameworks? How do we erect a built environment that responds to that?