The Inspiration Forum LAB is an interdisciplinary research programme designed to provide a space where artists and scientists can meet and work together on creating research-based multimedia art projects. The aim is to combine the scientific and artistic language to find ways of expression that could communicate to audiences beyond the boundaries of each of these two worlds.
The 2023/24 LAB will run for nine months (from October 2023 through June 2024) and will be followed up by project presentations in the autumn of 2024, and has been given the theme ‘Bodies of Water’. For centuries, bodies of water have served not only as the sources of our drinking water and livelihoods, but also as trade routes and supply chains for the modern capitalist economy. Water has been treated as a resource to be extracted, while at the same time it is imagined as a separate, remote entity capable of absorbing our waste and dissolving anthropogenic pollution. The system that has enabled the commodification of water and the violent exploitation of its various properties is the same one that has caused most of the painfully evident scarcity of freshwater and exacerbated inequalities in access to it. In a time of ecological urgency, a relational rethinking of water seems not only necessary but also necessarily political. How can water’s ability to connect the human scale with all other scales of life guide us in finding solutions to urgent ecological issues? What might water teach us about solidarity with other species and each other? And what can we learn about our interdependence with water and moisture from the radical conditions such as those found in deserted areas on Earth or in space?
Selected LAB participants will develop both theoretical and technical skills through a set of expert lectures and workshops taking place in Jihlava, Ljubljana, Bratislava, and online. Working in interdisciplinary groups, the participants will conduct collaborative research in order to develop concepts for their art projects. The final projects will be presented in the Display Gallery and at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.
Eligibility
- The programme is looking for 9 participants with various backgrounds (artists, filmmakers, architects, designers, social scientists, environmentalists, biologists, technology innovators, etc.), who will create three interdisciplinary groups. The programme is designed for individuals who want to experience new interdisciplinary collaborations, not for already-established teams that aim to develop existing projects.
- Age: 25–40 (recommended).
- Fluent in English.
Conditions
- Each participant will receive a stipend of €600.
- Each participant will be provided accommodation and a travel contribution (as sustainable as possible) to the sessions in Jihlava, Ljubljana, Bratislava, and the exhibition in Prague.
- Each group will work with a production budget of €1500.
