The residency ANABASIS inspired by Paul Celan, one of the most important German-speaking poets of the twentieth century, will feature German and Ukrainian artists working with new media. The artists are invited to deal with questions of identity and posthumanism in a funded workshop and project phase. The resulting works will be presented in November 2021.
Paul Celan, whose centenary was celebrated in 2020, is a crucial figure to scrutinise those tragedies, cracks and traumas that are imprinted on the collective body of humanity in the twentieth century. His multi-layered oeuvre is particularly suitable for investigating the question of the centrifugal forces to which the individual’s identity construction is exposed, when self-attribution and the attribution by others prove to be both a blessing and a curse – forces that mutually stipulate and exclude each other in a productively restless and motivically irredeemable process.
10 artists will be selected for the project in equal proportions from Germany and Ukraine (relevant is the place of work and residence, not the nationality). The artists will receive a total grant of 800 EUR or an equivalent in UAH for the project phase including the production costs of their contributions. During the two-week residency phase (19 July – 1 August 2021), the artists are invited to participate in internal online events with selected guests. The artistic contributions will be published digitally and exclusively on the project site anabasis.space.
