UNIDEE Residency Programs

Ways of becoming: 25 Years with UNIDEE

UNIDEE and Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto are pleased to announce three open calls for participation in the Fall/Winter 2024 Season of UNIDEE Modules Ways of becoming: 25 Years with UNIDEE, promoted and curated by the UNIDEE Advisory Board.

In 2024, UNIDEE Residency Programs celebrates 25 years of creating educational encounters for artists engaged in art and social transformation at its home at Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella (Italy). To celebrate this significant milestone and to forward-looking the future, in September a series of talks, lectures, and meetings will address some persistent and emerging issues related to art for social change, reflect on the transformation of socially engaged artistic practices over the past twenty-five years, and attempt to outline the different possibilities in which transdisciplinary art can unfold.
(More info on the celebration programme)

These questions will also be addressed with a new season of UNIDEE Modules.

The UNIDEE modules are programme-based, short-residency formats. The residencies will be opportunities to share and unpack your ongoing practice or action research with a group of peers, mentors, and guest speakers who will join for a panel discussion. Over the course of five days a group of up to twelve people per module will engage in a programme of seminars and presentations, group discussions and critiques, workshops, visits, and other responsive and informal activities.

The aim of the modules is to provide space in which to explore some of the questions and learning in more depth.

Participation is offered free of charge and a limited number of partial and full travel bursaries are made available to those who would not otherwise be able to participate.

Deadline for submission is Sunday 1st September 2024 23.59 (CET).

Please visit the individual module links for a broader overview of the themes covered and methodologies.

Module I - Unfolding Ecosystems: Institutional Practices from a Networked Perspective with mentor Fabiola Fiocco and facilitator Alessandra Saviotti (04 - 09 November 2024) offers the opportunity to rethink organisational and collaborative structures from a transnational perspective and imagine more equitable and sustainable working paradigms.
Keywords: Instituting / Situatedness / Commons / Embeddedness / Social Responsibility / Ecosystems / Dig where you stand / Maintenance / Infrastructure / Network / Constellations / Slowness / Scaffolding / Expanded Curatorship / Sustainability
Link to Module I

Module II - Ways of Practicing Conviviality: the artist as Host with mentor Susanne Bosch and facilitator Beatrice Catanzaro (18 - 22 November 2024) will explore artistic attitudes and qualities of an art practice that intends to invite others into the art-making process in a responsible and responsive way.
Keywords: Knowledge Production / Artistic Research / Conversation / Exchange / Participation / Informality / Sharing
Link to Module II

Module III - Cracking Concrete: making and maintaining radical structures through place-based practice with mentor Eva Rowson and Bianca Elzenbaumer and facilitator Andy Abbott (02 - 06 December 2024) we will explore practical and theoretical tools that can be used to create radical and equitable structures through place-based practices.
Keywords: Community / Locality / Place / Environment / Nature / Public Space / Commons / Embeddedness / Social Responsibility / Interculturality / Dig where you stand / Maintenance / invisible structures and barriers / reformist and abolitionist strategies / Access / Infrastructure (physical and societal)
Link to Module III

Module IV - The Present Utopia. An invitation to celebrate the richness of the present and to think together about the future of residences is co-curated by invited mentor Angela Serino. It is a module hosted by invitation with several Italian residencies.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Cittadellarte is located within the grade listed premises of the former Trombetta Wool Mill, a testimony of Biella’s past as one of the first European hubs within the textile industry.

Biella is a city of almost 50,000 inhabitants, located at 30 km from Ivrea, 75 Km from Turin, 85 km from Aosta, 100 km from Milan and 160 Km from Genoa. Biella is known for its textile industry, the beauty of its nature (it is located at the foot of the Alps), its rice fields, for its flora and fauna, for its water springs and as a pilgrimage destination.

Since 2019, it has been a UNESCO Creative City for Folk Arts and Crafts. It has been designated Alpine Town of the Year 2021.  

Cittadellarte’s aim is to inspire and produce a responsible change in society through ideas and creative projects. Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto was instituted in 1998 as a concrete action of the Progetto Arte Manifesto, where Michelangelo Pistoletto proposed a new role for the artist: that of placing art in direct interaction with all the areas of human activity which form society.

Cittadellarte is dedicated to the study, experimentation and development of practices translating the symbol of the Third Paradise into realty, implying it into every sector of society. It is a great laboratory, hosting many young artists, which generates unedited processes of development in diverse fields of culture, production, economics and politics.

Cittadellarte is a vibrant international network of cultural and social innovators, individuals actively interlaced with their social contexts where they often act as catalyst of change. The interrelationship between people and projects is based on a common vision whose roots lie in an accumulative thought&practice process, developed by a wide range of thinkers, managers, innovators of all field. Pistoletto’s work, from the 60s to today, acts as a pumping brain for Cittadellarte’s communities.
Cittadellarte has developed an extensive networks of collaborations with Institutions (various United Nations Agencies, Ministries, Universities and Educational Organizations) global enterprises and local businesses, civil society collectives, organizations and individuals from all fields.

Working and living spaces at UNIDEE

All participants have free access to:

• a seminar module / meeting room
• Cittadellarte library
• saladivani (a space to share with other residents for cooking and spending time together)
• laudry

Participants will be accommodated in single rooms with the use of a shared bathroom. Cittadellarte for each room provides bed linen and 2 towels. Each bathroom has a hair dryer and hand soap.
It is also possible to request an iron at the Cittadellarte Store during opening hours.

For residents staying in Cittadellarte for several weeks there are two shared houses with single rooms and shared bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room.