Platform is an art organisation based in Vasa, a relatively peripheral Finnish town. They run an art space and a residency to offer live experiences of different perspectives in a location where this would otherwise be limited. The last few years this has been a challenge.
We usually work with an annual theme that we also encourage our guest artists to examine. In 2022 we tried to stay positive, be cheerful, start over and start fresh. We thought that “New beginnings” would be a good theme for the year. But it turns out things didn’t really start anew, mostly everything just kept on grinding or gathering dust.
So for 2023/24 we want to try something different. Instead of giving you a theme to respond to we would like to ask a question and reflect on the artist’s role, the practice of the artist and the relevance of art work/art works. What is the relevance of your work and artworks and how does your practice relate to the Platform residency question?
For the year 2023, Platform have 3-4 slots in their residency and are particularly looking for:
- Artists who react to and are interested in working with local issues.
- Artists who work with place-specific projects.
- Artists who are comfortable working independently in a small town.
Platform offers accommodation, travel expenses (one return trip, cheapest possible), and a working grant (approx. 300 € per week). They also offer a small production budget of 1000€, which the artist may reimburse by presenting original receipts of purchases, specifically connected to the project produced during the residency.
Resident artists are asked to realise a project, which can be presented either during the residency or at a later stage.
