Residency Phase II: Spatio-Mnemonic
Introduction
The Unstitute’s unique virtual residency programme is a series of developmental projects which engage with and disengage from the mobile, shifting web-architecture of The Unstitute itself on The Internet. Participants do not ‘question the boundaries’, (as per the rhetoric of the Art Institution,) but are instead encouraged to create boundaries, objections and impasses and furthermore affirm the movements afforded by this activity. The Unstitute is a memory palace.
Phase I of the ongoing residency project consisted in a series of artists’ projects which responded to the central triads of this dynamic: [active-reactive-passive] – [thought-speech-text] – [force-resistance-vector]. The conclusion of each 3-month residency term resulted in the erasure of all works produced. Artist Nick Middleton, whose project was subtitled ‘Nostalgia is a Weapon’, photographed himself pressing the delete key on his entire project and then deleted that photograph. These efforts were disposed of as freely as they were given, thus challenging ‘the labour of the negative’.
Proposal
The second phase of residencies inverts the former. Residents are invited via open submission to create permanent extensions and installations within the web-architecture of The Unstitute, all of which deal with the recovery of things best forgot. In making permanent and evident that which we prefer to erase, censor, repress, deny or otherwise negate, the dynamic processes of memory become architectonic, functional and incorporate.
How to apply
To make an application, please send a description/outline/drawing of your project and how you intend to carry it out and how you feel it relates to the criteria outlined above. Work can be of any nature, (i.e. writing, images, video, sculpture, net-art, audio, flash-animation,) but must be presented on html web-pages of your own design. Please also include a link to your previous projects. If you have any technical or other queries about the programme, please contact theunstitute@gmail.com
Applications are free of charge.
If your application is successful, you will be allotted a residency period in which to create your project and a launch date. After this period, the project will remain on continuous display at The Unstitute for the foreseeable future. Your extension will be announced during construction and upon completion will be promoted via e-newsletters and various online mailing lists. The Unstitute is a self-supporting architecture built upon the activity of participants; as such we are unable to offer financial assistance to residents.
The Unstitute reserves the right to amend or remove pages as it sees fit, though participants will always be consulted in this eventuality.
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