The Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) in Hamburg is awarding a three-month residency to a promising artist, (social) designer, architect and/or environmental activist. The aim of the residency is the development of a project engaging the topic of water-related climate change inspired by the materials, technologies and/or ecological knowledge in the museum’s collections. The residency is planned for September - November 2021 and is taking place in the context of the EU-Project TAKING CARE – Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care.
Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
- Water distribution, collection and irrigation.
- Water pollution and purification.
- Riverine and marine wildlife, water ecologies and ‘multispecism’.
- Water as agent/ancestor (i.e. “Living Rivers” movement and the legal personhood of water bodies), explorations of the animate-inanimate.
- Water-related religious ceremonies, origin stories, narratives, and mythologies.
- Fisheries, overfishing and fishing technologies.
- Water as life-giving fluid.
- Waterscapes as basis for navigation, transportation, networks, trade, barter.
- Forms of construction on/in water.
- Contemporary water justice movements and neoliberalism.
- Water as model of design, waves as power generator, etc.
- Freighter disasters/oil spills.
- Water settlements/harbours.
- Envisioning human-animal-enviroment relationships beyond human exceptionalism.
Outcomes of the residency
- The artistic project will be presented in an accompanying exhibition planned at the museum under the heading ‘Designing Sustainable Futures’, which will open as part of the Taking Care project in March 2022.
- Presentation of work in the form of an artist talk, conversation or performance.
- The residency will be documented on MARKK’s website and the Taking Care project website.
The residency offers
- Travel and subsistence: 4000€.
- Artist honorarium including production/material costs 11,000€.
- Access to the museum’s holdings and archives.
- A work place within the museum.