Falling in love: residencies and communities

This issue of the engage Journal investigates the relationships between organisations, audiences and the artists who are invited to develop their practice and/or make new work in a specific context and for a defined purpose. Read more about engage 37 here.

In this context, TransArtists proposed to write an article together with Sepake Angiama, educator and curator whose interest revolves around critical, discursive education practices and the “social framework.” currently Head of Education for Documenta 14.

Angiama: ‘Even though I visited Utrecht previously I had expected that the project would work because how could the residents not be interested in my proposal? But of course people were indifferent and the project didn’t operate as a community project with my direct neighbours from that locality. I needed to find a temporary community that was interested in engaging with my proposal’.

The discussion between Panevska and Angiama pinpoints that residencies are fundamentally about relationships, and they take time to identify and develop. They emphasise the social context and compare the need for time to get to know each other to falling in love: ‘But there is no guarantee, it is impossible to predict what kind of relationships you can potentially develop in a certain time frame. It is like falling in love, you don’t know where and when it will happen, but it happens in different ways and with different people’.

engage 37: Time and Place: Hosting and commissioning artists
Spring 2016
Published by engage, London
www.engage.org