A text by ALEXANDRO DO CARMO
“The aim of the residency program is to facilitate communication between the artist and the public,”—variants of this phrase appear in residency programs the world over. Though in many cases, the interaction, for funding or promotional reasons, is created by channeling the public into the artist’s studio—to see them at work in their native environment—or the artist is instructed to leave the studio door open so that the public could see them at work and ask questions of the artist.
Instead, what I believe would be helpful, would be for programs to provide the artist with all available means in order to provoke the encounter between artist and public within the public’s natural habitat—the external of the residency itself, the street, public space.
Through such interactions, the public becomes an active element, creating the friction necessary for any interesting dialogue. In this way, the residency is promoting communication between both parties, allowing the artist to investigate possibilities for action rather than the fish tank effect of ‘open studios’ programs where the public curiosity for the hidden private is satisfied.
Already in 1855, Gustave Courbet formalized a fundamental shift in artistic practice from the romantic transformation of subject to a realistic re-presentation of subject- an egalitarian or even democratic impulse validating daily life over distant mythological subjects[1]. The condition of the artist studio has been evolving from a complete isolation (a room), to a situation where the studio does not have a fixed physical structure –the work may happen anywhere, where there’s a clear intention to act upon certain social and political conditions, a disruption of the social norm. The residence arrangement should be one that actively helps the artist achieve their ends even if the result is not fixed spatially.
Unfortunately, peculiar arrangements abound: residences programs that call for the discrete production of an art work as a product within the specified amount of time—delivering the goods, residencies that advertise the natural surroundings—a vacation to paradise land, residencies proud of their monastic isolation, to photos of the artist’s prospective studio so carefully prepared that a sushi plate waits on the kitchenette counter waiting to receive the artist in style.
Without neglecting the importance of the actual physical importance of Wolfe’s room of one’s own in artistic production—we all need it and it is why we apply to residency programs or funding, I envision a perfect residency; one with no walls, using all the necessary walls available in the community, one where to build new walls means to carefully design them according to people’s discourse, transforming language into a concrete room.
Alexandra do Carmo
[1] With the painting L’Atelier du peintre, allégorie réelle déterminant une phase de sept années de ma vie artistique, by Gustave Courbet,
