Constellations Intermediterranean Gazes is a programme of artistic residencies, cultural dissemination, and Euroregional territorial cooperation that aims to stimulate the exchange and projection of young emerging artists living in the Catalan, Occitan, and Balearic territories through the creation of photography and audiovisual projects that dialogue on migration and border issues within the Mediterranean context. The programme is led by FotoLimo Festival (located on the Franco-Catalan border) in collaboration with the associations Es Far Cultural (Menorca), Lumière d’Encre (Ceret), Jiser (Barcelona), and with the support of the Euroregion Pyrenees Mediterranean.
From the Roman limes to today’s globalised world, borders may simultaneously play the role of bridge and barrier. Wanderings, nomadisms, pilgrimages, invasions, exiles, and colonisation have turned the history of mankind into a history of migrations. Nowadays, the migration phenomenon continues its course in a most tragic way. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the year 2019 ended with more than 1200 migrants dying in the Mediterranean Sea and 110,000 arrivals to Europe, which is the sixth consecutive year of massive arrivals.
Convinced of the role of the image as a vehicle for transformation, Constellations wants to support and promote emerging young creation by providing a space for reflection as it imagines, creates, and enriches itself with new forms of cultural hybridisation. Through a format of artistic residencies, virtual meetings, traveling exhibitions, and cultural actions, the project aims to help create bridges between the various identities and territories that make up the Euroregion, establishing new points of reflection that have emerged through the artistic and cultural exchange in terms of migration and borders. Constellations also wants to promote the virtual format as a normalising fact in the current context of the health crisis.
Through this call, two young artists will be selected to develop a project on the call’s theme in one of the two proposed artistic residencies, led by the associations Lumière d’Encre and Es Far Cultural, located in Ceret (Occitania) and Es Mercadal (Menorca) respectively. Each will last one month and take place during the spring-summer period of 2021. During the residency, artists will have at least one meeting with the local public to share their creative process. The programme also involves virtual meetings and in-person activities as part of Fotolimo Festival, which will take place in the villages of Colera, Portbou, and Cerbère during the second half of September 2021. The programme culminate in a travelling exhibition.
The call is open to photographers and visual artists up to and including age 35, regardless of nationality or condition. Each of the 2 chosen artists will receive an amount of 2700 € of which 1500 € corresponds to the artist royalties, 700€ to production and material (managed by the artists), and 500 € to transportation, which includes both the journey to the chosen residence and to FotoLimo festival.