Curatorial collective What, How and for Whom / WHW announces an open call for applications to participate in the second year of WHW Akademija, an international art study program based in Zagreb, Croatia. The program runs from November 4, 2019, to May 31, 2020.
Application Deadline: April 29, 2019
Selection interviews – in person (for Zagreb-based applicants) and over Skype – will be conducted between May 20 – 31, 2019.
Results will be announced by mid June 2019.
WHW Akademija is a new program for emerging artists. It aims to foster new forms of self-determination, based on modes of critical reflection, curiosity and encounters among artists, artworks, art professionals, scholars and practitioners across disciplines. The WHW Akademija shares part of its title with the WHW curatorial collective, who drew their name from an acronym of the three basic questions of every economic organization: What, How & for Whom. WHW Akademija departs from the notion of the ‘conscious citizen,’ aiming to offer a broad educational spectrum and access to conflicting ideas and opinions, as well as to incorporate principles and values applicable to wider social and political life. It is imagined as a place for testing ideas, making discoveries and encouraging trial and errors. The program of WHW Akademija endeavors to position the notion of ‘learning by doing’ as a crucial element in the reciprocal educational process, which encourages students to actively co-produce critical content. In doing so, WHW Akademija highlights the collective methods of co-learning.
The resident professors throughout this year’s program are David Maljković and Kate Sutton, who will collaboratively develop a mentoring program and regular meetings for the students; and Sanja Iveković who will conduct a masterclass for the participants on a monthly basis. Guest professors are Banu Cennetoğlu, DAAR (Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti) and Manuel Pelmuş. Participants will be invited to participate in shaping part of the program through suggesting and developing associations with local figures and initiatives.
The Advisory Board members of WHW Akademija are David Maljković, Emily Pethick, Kathrin Rhomberg and Christine Tohme.
WHW Akademija is realized in partnership with the Kontakt Art Collection. The collection focuses on experimental and neo avant-garde art activities in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe from the late 1950s onwards. The manifold artistic positions included in the Kontakt Art Collection will serve as one of the foundations for discussions and interventions of other formats in WHW Akademija.
In the first year of the program, 2018 – 2019, the resident professors were Ben Cain, Tina Gverović and Sanja Iveković, with Pierre Bal Blanc, Rajkamal Khalon, Adam Szymczyk and Wendelien van Oldenborgh serving as guest professors. Additionally, the WHW Akademija welcomed guest speakers and collaborators including Charles Esche, Greg de Cuir, Mladen Domazet, Ana Janevski, Božena Končić Badurina, Oscar Murillo, Manuel Pelmuş, Kathrin Rhomberg, Dubravka Sekulić, Marko Tadić, Goran Trbuljak, Jelena Vesić, and Želimir Žilnik, among others.
The participants of the inaugural 2018-19 year are: Laura Barić (Zagreb); Jakub Danilewicz (Gdańsk); Philippa Driest (Rotterdam); Vida Guzmić (Zagreb); Larion Lozovoy (Kyiv); Petra Mrša (Rijeka); Jelena Petric (Zagreb); and Paky Vlassopoulou (Athens.)
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
WHW Akademija is a 7-month study program for 8 to 12 international participants. It is open to individuals seeking to deepen their formal, theoretical and critical skills in art, and who are at the beginning of developing an independent artistic practice. Students will be engaged in an intense process of working and learning, combining discursive formats and a number of practical exercises, including encounters with the public.
Participants will have access to a shared WHW working space and a small production fund. Some of the program’s lectures and seminars will be public. The working language of WHW Akademija is English.
The 2019-20 program includes continuous support provided by resident professors, David Maljković, Kate Sutton, as well as members of WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović) as core faculty. The resident professors will lead group and individual critique sessions, while WHW will provide mentoring support throughout the process. The guest professors Banu Cennetoğlu, DAAR (Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti) and Manuel Pelmuş will each conduct a two-week workshop consisting of both collective work and individual critiques with the students. Additionally, the program will include seminars led by international and local guests (to be announced later), as well as seminars based on the works in the Kontakt Art Collection, led by WHW.
WHW Akademija will begin November 4 with an in-depth introduction to the program allowing the students to get to know one other’s practices as well as aspects of Zagreb’s local cultural and activist scene.
ADMISSION
For 2019-2020, students will be selected through an open call. Applicants should be practicing artists with or without formal training.
Your application should be submitted through this application form by April 29, 2019, and include the following information:
A full CV
A short biography of 250 words
Statement about your work (2 pages max)
PDF document with work descriptions and captioned images (15 pages max) including links to media from YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud. Please title your files according to the following formulation: “your last name_your first name.”
Candidates are considered on merit, as well as on their application’s relevance to the aims of WHW Akademija. The Advisory Board selects an initial shortlist of candidates for interviews. Shortlisted applicants will be contacted for a Skype or in person (for those based in Zagreb) interview, conducted between May 20 – 31, 2019. Applicants will be notified of their status by middle of June.
Applicants must commit full-time to the assigned schedule. External engagements must be kept at an absolute minimum and should not interfere with attendance and participation in the program.
The program is open to applicants from all countries.
For additional questions, please contact
TUITION & FINANCIAL AID
WHW Akademija is tuition free. Participants will receive financial aid in the amount of 500 euro monthly to help offset the basic cost of living in Zagreb. Due to high costs of living in Zagreb, however, participants will need to obtain additional funds for their living expenses. Participants are expected to find their own accommodation in Zagreb, with support provided by the WHW office.
WHW Akademija is funded by Kontakt Art Collection and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives. Additional funds for the public program have been granted by the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia and City Office for Culture, Education and Sports of the City of Zagreb.
ABOUT THE PROFESSORS
Banu Cennetoğlu explores the political, social and cultural dimension of the production, representation and distribution of knowledge and asks how it feeds into a society’s collective thought and becomes part of its ideology. She lives and works in Istanbul, where, in 2016, she initiated BAS, a project space focusing on the collection and production of artists’ books and printed matter. In 2016, she was a guest at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Solo exhibitions include: Sculpture Center, New York (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2015); Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: “Stories of Almost Everyone,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); “The Restless Earth,” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2017); 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010); 53rd Venice Biennale/Pavilion of Turkey (2009); 5th Berlin Biennale (2008); and 1st Athens Biennale and 10th Istanbul Biennial (both 2007).
The artistic research of Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti is situated between politics, architecture, art and pedagogy. In their practice, art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts. Together, Hilal and Petti are co-directors of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency), an architectural studio that explores the reuse, subversion and profanation of actual structures of domination: from evacuated military bases to refugee camps, uncompleted governmental structures, or the remains of destroyed villages. In 2012, they initiated “Campus in Camps,” an experimental educational program hosted in Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, with the aims to overcome conventional educational structures by creating a space for critical and grounded knowledge production (www.campusincamps.ps). Petti is currently a professor of Architecture and Social Justice at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, where Hilal has initiated the living room, a series of spaces of hospitality that have the potential to subvert the role of guest and host. Their latest book, published in 2018 by Art and Theory, is entitled Permanent Temporariness.
Sanja Iveković was born in Zagreb, Croatia, where she currently lives and works. She was raised in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and belongs to the artistic generation covered by the umbrella term “New Art Practice”, that emerged after ’68. Iveković has continuously contested the role of art in society through a wide range of media, at the points of intersection between gender, nation and class. Her work from the 1990s deals with the collapse of socialist regimes and the consequences of the triumph of capitalism and the market economy over living conditions, particularly of women. She has participated in numerous international biennials and major exhibitions, such as the 38th EVA International Biennial, Limerick (2018); Documenta 8, 11, 12 and 13, 14 (1987, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017); Kiev Biennial, Kiev (2015); Artes Mundi, Cardif (2014); and the Istanbul Biennial (2009, 2007). She has had solo exhibitions at DAAD Gallery, Berlin (2015); the South London Gallery/Calvert 22 (2012-2013); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2012); MAC/VAL, France (2012); MoMA, New York (2011); and the two-part exhibition at BAK, Utrecht, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2009.)
David Maljković was born in Rijeka, Croatia. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Zagreb and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and is currently based in Berlin and Zagreb. Maljković’s work is a highly controlled variant exploitation of formalist concerns. While narrative is the driving element at the origination of a project, the artist’s varied means of visual implementation profoundly modifies and compromises its supremacy. The process of construction within a set of formal directives encrypts the narrative and postulates what Maljković describes as a new semantic logic. Virtually all of Maljkovic’s work is engaged with historical and technological markers that are characterized by situations both local and universal. In each, the erosion and corruption of memory are the subjects that are left for the viewer to re-organize. Among Maljković’s selected solo exhibitions are: The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); Kunstmuseum Sankt Gallen (2014); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2013); GAMeC, Bergamo (2013); CAC Vilnius (2013); Sculpture Center, New York (2012); Kunsthalle Basel (2012); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012, 2005); Secession, Vienna (2011); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009); Whitechapel, London (2007); CAPC Musee d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2007); and MOMA PS1 (2007.) His work has been exhibited in museums such as Kunsthaus Bregenz; MAXXI Rome; MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, Spain; The Power Plant, Toronto; Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and Centre Pompidou, Paris. He has participated in numerous large-scale group shows, including the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016); 56th Biennale di Venezia (2015); La Triennale, Paris (2012); the 29th Sao Paulo Biennial (2010); 11th and 9th Istanbul Biennial (2009, 2007); the 4th Tirana Biennial (2009); and the 5th Berlin Biennale (2008), among others. His works are part of major public collections, such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; MUMOK, Vienna; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; MOMA, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tate Collection, London.
Manuel Pelmuş was born in Bucharest, Romania. He is a choreographer and artist who lives and works in Oslo and Bucharest. Pelmuş could be seen as one of the protagonists of the “new performance turn,” artists who have been reimagining the role of performance in the context of visual arts. He often deploys continuous live presence within the context of exhibitions, using enactment as a strategy and the human body as a medium and a means to explore the body’s relationship to memory and the construction of history. In addition to his recent solo exhibition at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018), Pelmus’s projects have been featured at institutions including the Tate Modern, London; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Centre National de la Danse, Paris; TanzQuartier, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Tanz im August, Berlin; and the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, among others. In 2013, he represented Romania at the 55th Venice Biennale with a collaborative project with Alexandra Pirici. He has additionally participated in the Off-Biennale, Budapest (2017), and the Kyiv Biennale (2015). In 2012, Pelmus was awarded the Berlin Art Prize for performance arts and later recognized with the prize for excellence from the National Dance Center of Bucharest in 2015.
Kate Sutton is a writer currently based in Zagreb, Croatia, after nearly a decade in Russia, where she helped found the non-profit art space Baibakov Art Projects. As a curator, she helped bring artists like Paul Pfeiffer, Cyprien Gaillard, Latifa Echakhch, Wade Guyton and Luc Tuymans to Moscow, while also showcasing Russian artists including Ira Korina, Olga Chernysheva and Valery Chtak. In addition to writing for magazines including Artforum, Bidoun, Frieze, Ibraaz, and LEAP, and regularly contributing to artforum.com, she is now an international editor for Artforum. She has penned catalogue essays for artists including Nilbar Güreş, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Monica Bonvicini, Dorian Gaudin, Basim Magdy, Stefan Sava and Martin Roth. In 2013, she was recognized with an Art Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She has lectured and participated in various conferences and talks programs, organizing the Talks Program for the Vienna Contemporary in 2016 and 2017. Among her recent curatorial projects is “Nathalie Du Pasquier: Fair Game,” which was on view this winter at the International Centre for Graphic Arts in Ljubljana.
What, How & for Whom/WHW (Ivet Ćurlin Ana Dević, Nataša lić, Sabina Sabolović)
http://whw-akademija.whw.hr/