Up to eight residents are invited to join the Sommerakademie Paul Klee (SPK) programme, curated by cultural worker Andrea Thal, and beginning on 12 August 2023. Over the course of 2023 & 2024, the SPK features public lectures, closed-door seminars, and access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and technical support at the Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB) – but also teaching opportunities at the HKB.
Travel, accommodation, visa expenses and a per diem of CHF 50 are covered. Residents using production facilities are entitled to a modest production stipend of CHF 500. Each year of the cycle also has a pot of money at their disposal that can be allocated collectively.
Timeline:
- The first meeting in Bern will take place from 12-19 August 2023.
- The second meeting in Bern is planned for mid-August 2024.
- Between summer 2023 and late 2024 the group will sporadically meet online.
- In spring or autumn 2024, for periods of up to five days, residents will have access to HKB infrastructure and technical support. During that time, they will also conduct workshops or studio visits with HKB students, remunerated at the standard local rates.
The curatorial framework for 2023/24 is ‘Finding our feet’. SPK wishes to bring together a group of residents who have experience in working with others in modes of crisis or struggle in cultural, activist or education contexts. To find our feet means to grow more confident in a new or shifting situation, to grow familiar with the ground we are standing on and from where we act. Finding our feet will dedicate time to detailed research of methodologies and economies of collective working practices, the reflection and awareness tools that grow out of groups whose practices imagine different forms of relating to each other, as well as artistic and experimental ways of making art together. Based on the awareness that such practices are always highly specific to their contexts, the programme hopes to build its field of resonance together with the residents and based on their questions. In light of this, the programme proposes a loose structure with room for decisions to be taken in the group and is able to accommodate shifts in its focus and direction.
Finding our feet is an educational format that tries to create a space for sharing and engagement with each other’s practices through two gatherings taking place in the summer of 2023 and 2024, and sporadically online. The programme is a respite of sorts, a time to reflect and find inspiration and accomplices across time and space. Taking part in the programme requires the openness and the generosity to listen to and learn from each other and to build spaces for sharing within the group and at times beyond it. The 2023/24 cycle hopes to bring together a group of residents who see themselves being part of such a process and who can imagine that the exchange and the reflections could make a modest contribution to the resilience of the collective structures they are part of. A strong belief in the powerful transformative tool of education is the basis of the programme and from where it tries to imagine alternative artistic, social or political relations. Beyond sharing through words, the gatherings can include practices such as printmaking, movement/dance, listening, cooking etc.
It is possible for more than one person from the same collective or group to apply or to send a collective application nominating one to two representatives that will alternate in taking part in the residency.
