Artists from Nida Art Colony are landing in Vilnius for a couple of days and inviting everybody to meet them during the performative event “In our own words” on Tuesday (10.23) at 6 pm in the exhibition "Message left after Signal" of Tim Kliukoit & Paul Paper in Malonioji 6, Vilnius. Within the framework of a five minute presentation eight artists and curators - all residents at Nida art colony - will talk in their first language about their work.

Participants: Marika Troili (SE), Vahag Hamalbashyan (Armenia), Myroslav Vayda (Ukraine), Natalia Zintsova (RU), Marta Bogdanska (PL), Olivia Glasser (UK), Petra Koehle(CH), Vytautas Michelkevicius (LT).

The other artists stayed in Nida to work on their projects: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky (CH/NL), Fiona Reilly (Ireland), Peter Wehinger (AT).

All these artists are taking part in a two months curated residency / exhibition project "Taking Time" which focus on what happens within the time and spatial frame of an artistic residency, based around themes surrounding "On Hosting and Displacing”. Working with a group of artists from Eastern and Western Europe, curators Federica Martini and Petra Koehle (Switzerland) are using an experimental curatorial format - Petra Koehle (CH) working with the artists for the first 10 days of the project and Federica Martini arriving towards the end of the residency to finalise the curation of the works, ready for the exhibition in the Gallery “Akademija” of Vinius Academy of Arts in December. The artists are currently sharing ideas, experiences and references to build around themes of the project collaboratively.

On the exhibition in artist/curator-run-space “Malonioji 6”:

Emerging Lithuanian artists Tim Kliukoit and Paul Paper present photography and object installation "Message, left after the signal". Tim Kliukoit works with objects, providing new meanings to the found and no-longer-wanted things through re-framing and re-contextualizing. Paul Paper is an everyday photographer, capturing tiny moments of unspectacular life. In their first collaborative exhibition the artists aimed to bridge a dialogue between objects and photographs - giving new sense to each piece exhibited. "Message, left after the signal" is the exhibition about the in-between stages, ambiguities and the realm of senses, questioning the (im)possibility of an art installation to effectively speak about it.

Project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Ministry of Culture of Lithuanian Republic, Nordic-Baltic mobility programme for culture.

More about it www.nidacolony.lt.

Nida Art Colony is pleased to welcome four new residents, Toni Ledentsa (FIN), Sigbjørn Bratlie (NOR), Jeanie Sinclair (UK) and Luca Diffuse (ITA), that recently joined our current autumn / winter residents.

Toni Ledentsa (FIN) is an independent curator, co-coordinator of XL Art Space and currently pursuing an MA in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art at the Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki. Writing his thesis on curatorial residencies, he is getting some first-hand experience through his stay at the colony.

Sigbjørn Bratlie (NOR) works with installation, painting, video and performance. Influenced by popular culture and frequently employing the aesthetics of humour or slapstick in his works, there is an analytical undertone in the way he plays with the production of art works in the midst of an overwhelming flow of TV, movies, pop music, advertising, fashion and cartoons.

Jeanie Sinclair(UK) is the Research Fellow at St. Ives Archive, and is currently undertaking PhD research at University College Falmouth. Following her project Intangible Archives, a soundwalk of the coastal town of St Ives, combining interviews with local residents and a soundtrack of field recordings of the area, Jeanie is developing on a new audio research project, The Intangible Archive Nida.

Luca Diffuse (ITA) is an architect whose practice spans writing, workshops and research. In 2010, he set up ‘writing extended explanations’, his Rome-based architecture agency and recently exhibited at Venice Biennale 2012. He has previously worked with the sound mapping of spaces, undertone atmospheres and abandoned towns as potential art colonies.

Everybody is welcome on 16th November to taste our herbal teas and homemade pies from 21.00 to 23.00. Moreover you can see the short film programme of our present and previous residents.

Artists from East-West project in the process of preparing for the exhibition were taking part in the open studios with visiting curator Kitty Scott (former director of Visual Arts at Banff Centre, Canada).

Participating artists and researchers in residence:
Toni Ledentsa (FIN), Sigbjørn Bratlie (NO), Jeanie Sinclair (UK) and Luca Diffuse (IT), Marika Troili (SE), Vahag Hamalbashyan (Armenia), Natalia Zintsova (RU), Marta Bogdanska (PL).

Pictures from Open Studios.

Welcome on Sunday (12.02) 6pm to the Colony to the lecture by Jurij Dobriakov Mapping the Self: Being Born In a Place One Does Not Belong In. He is Lithuanian culture critic and writer born in Sovetsk (Russian name, DE- Tilsit, LT - Tilžė) in 1983, grown-up in Klaipėda and now based in Vilnius.

Summary of the lecture:
How does one build one's connection with a place where one is merely a representative of the last wave of colonizers? How does one construct one's self in relation to this place? What does it mean to be a colonizer, and can a colonizer ever become a local? What role do place names play in colonizing or "domesticating" the new territory, and how does naming and renaming transform the place? How can one displace oneself creatively and positively in a place that has a history of violent displacement, conquest and colonization? These and similar questions will frame the presentation that will hopefully turn into a productive discussion.

Here is also a text related to the talk by him
http://www.t-r-a-c-e-s.net/component/content/article/9-inter-format/228-how-many-places-can-a-site-hold

This lecture is a part of the projects East-West together with "On Hosting and Displacing". The curated exhibition "Taking Time" generated from these two projects will open on 10th December 6pm in Vilnius in the gallery "Akademija".

Welcome to see exhibition by our resident who spent more than 4 months in Nida Art Colony. Exhibition includes her work from Nida as well as her previous work. You can see the documentation online artnews.lt

In the House of Grass Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky explores formal properties of ordinary plants. In Vilnius the artist shows her previous work in combination with collages and video footage shot during her recent residency at the Nida Art Colony. By recording, collecting, editing and recreating forms found in the wild Kovacovsky deals with our perception of nature, and the subjective line between reality and fantasy.

Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, born 1980 in Switzerland, currently lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. She studied design and photography at the Schule für Gestaltung in Basel and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Kovacovsky’s work was featured in group shows in Europe and the US, among others in “I heart Photograph“ at the Higher Pictures Gallery in New York, “Rietveld Arsenale” 
during the Venice Biennale 2009, Quickscan #01 at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and the “New York Photography Biennale” in 2010. She is represented by Galerie Stampa in Basel.

Exhibition will take place from November 16 to December 11, 2012 at Malonioji street 6, Vilnius

Open on Saturdays, 2-4 pm or by appointment tel. +37060410605

Welcome to read the text in the main Lithuanian Cultural weekly 7MD on exhibition. Please use translate.google.com
http://www.7md.lt/daile/2012-11-30/Ziurovas-turi-tapti-grotuvu

Nida Art Colony is developing its residency programme and inviting international experts, curators and critics to advance the residency programme and define its specific profile among the other residencies in the world. The public lecture on residencies and their models are planned in Vilnius on 10th of December at 4.30pm in CAC by Bojana Panevska from Trans Artists network which has over 1200 residencies in the database.

On November 18-21st curator Kitty Scott - director (2008-2012) of Visual Arts at Banff Centre (Canada) was visiting Nida Art Colony and discussing its activities and programmes. Banff Centre is one of world's leading residency centres. Kitty Scott was also the agent of dOCUMENTA (13) and curated the residency "The Retreat: A Position of dOCUMENTA (13)".

From December 6th to 9th Johan Pousette from Sweden is visiting Nida Art Colony. He founded the Baltic Art Center, a unique international artist-in-production residency and exhibition program. He served as director there until 2007. This residency centre in Visby town in Gotland island shares similar atmosphere with Nida and is probably the closest neighborhood residency centre. At the moment he is employed by Riksutställningar in Sweden as Coordinator for Contemporary Art. Also active as a freelance curator (curated the Gothenburg Biennial 2009 and the October Salon in Belgrade 2010).

During the same period Bojana Panevska, artist and education and workshop presenter from Trans Artists network, is also visiting the colony and giving a lecture about worldwide residency opportunities for Lithuanian artists in Vilnius.

These trips are generously supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.

Taking Time: Only the expanse of snow could be seen, white as this page
Group show of residents from Nida Art Colony (LT)

Where: Gallery Akademija, Pilies st. 44 / Latako st. 2, Vilnius, Lithuania.

From 11.12.2012 – 15.12.2012

Opening: 10.12.2012 at 6 pm; Artist talk by Henning Lundkvist at 6.30 p.

Lecture before the opening on worldwide residency opportunities by Bojana Panevska (Amsterdam, TransArtists.org) at 4.30 pm in CAC café, Vilnius, Vokiečiu st. 2.

Participating Artists: Marta Bogdanska (PL), Sigbjorn Bratlie (NO), Luca Diffuse (IT), Olivia Glasser (UK), Vahag Hamalbashyan (ARM), Petra Koehle (AT/CH), Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky (CH/NL), Toni Ledentsa (FIN), Henning Lundkvist (SE), Federica Martini (IT/CH), Vytautas Michelkevičius (LT), Fiona Reilly (IRL), Jeanie Sinclair (UK), Marika Troili (SE), Myroslav Vayda (UA), Peter Wehinger (AT), Natalia Zintsova (RUS).

Taking Time is a group show opening at gallery Akademija in Vilnius, Lithuania on December, 10th at 6 pm. A curatorial project proposed by Petra Koehle (CH/AT) and Federica Martini (CH/IT), the exhibition focuses on what happens within the time- and spatial frame of an artistic residency at Nida Art Colony.

Much reflection was developed in recent years on cultural nomadism and its impact on artistic production. Based on general reactions to the inclusion/exclusion dialectics, authenticity and questions about site-specificity, artists-in-residence programs were at the same time effects and agents of this change. They imply the enactment of hosting and displacement as a cultural production strategy.

In this sense, the potential of retreat offered by residency programmes present itself both as a “time lapse” in regular working routine, a collective working framework and a situation providing new landscapes, materials and narratives.

Most of the works in the exhibition were produced during the residency, and were proposed by the residents as a response to some of the questions addressed by Taking Time. They share projects developed during the residency for other exhibitions, as well as different approaches to the landscape surrounding the Colony and collective activities that have been going on during the residencies. Some editions, presented in the reading room, are collaborations initiated by the residents, binding together lists of residents’ unrealized projects and an appropriation of the 2012 Liverpool Biennial flyer, which theme was “The Unexpected Guest”. Parallel to the exhibition Taking Time, it is possible to visit House of Grass, a solo show of Nida resident Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky at project space Malonioji g. 6, Vilnius. It is open on December 8^th 4-6pm and on December 11^th 5-7pm.

The exhibition at Gallery Akademija in Vilnius is part of an ongoing exchange On Hosting and Displacing between Ecole Cantonale d'art du Valais (CH) and the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts (LT) reflecting these issues. The cooperation is supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council. It is the first exhibition in Vilnius of works by Nida Art Colony residents. Nida Art Colony, a branch of Vilnius Academy of Arts, started its residency programme in March 2011. Most participating artists are from the curated residency programme East-West in collaboration with partners from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Armenia and supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. The programme revives the idea of Nida (and its famous postal route until XIX century) as a historical transit and meeting point for people from Eastern and Western Europe.

Partner residencies: Foundation "IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives.“ (Ukraine), Akos Cultural NGO (Armenia), A-I-R laboratory at The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle (Poland), ACM (Assotiation of cultural Managers) with AiR-programm in Nikola-Lenivets (Russia).

Supported by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Art Council, Lietuvos Respublikos kultūros ministerija / Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Šiaurės Baltijos šalių mobilumo programa: kultūra / Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture, Beer Dundulis.

«A cooperation project1 in the framework of the exchange programme with Central and
Eastern Europe, initiated by the liaison office of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia in
Warsaw.» www.prohelvetia.pl

On the occasion of the first Nida residents exhibition 'Taking Time' in Vilnius, Nida Art Colony is inviting all the Lithuanian artists to

Lecture on worldwide residency opportunities by Bojana Panevska (Amsterdam, TransArtists.org) on 10th of December at 4.30 pm in CAC café, Vilnius, Vokiečiu st.

Trans Artists is a knowledge centre on cultural mobility, with a strong focus on artist-in-residence opportunities. Here you can find all about facts, use and value of international artist-in-residence programs as well as other cultural opportunities for artists to stay and work elsewhere. Trans Artists operates mainly from the artists' perspective and usually cooperates with a wide range of partners in all world regions, increasingly more in depth within European countries. Trans Artists makes the enormous worldwide residential art labyrinth accessible and usable to the artists, through its website, newsletter, research and workshop programs.

The Trans Artists website offers a database of 1200 residencies worldwide.

Bojana Panevska is a visual artist and researcher based in Amsterdam, where she graduated at Gerrit Rietveld Academy (audio-visual department) and afterwards received a master’s degree of Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute. She has been in few artist-in-residence places in Europe and Asia.

About the workshop/lecture

Many questions and answers concerning artist in residence opportunities addressed in the Trans Artists’ workshops are similar for artists anywhere: for instance, how to find the programme that fits your interest; how to apply; how to fund etc. But there are also questions and answers that are specific for different disciplines or for regional art scenes. And the main question is: how to match your individual wishes and expectations with the demands and conditions of the artist in residence programme?

Trans Artists’ workshops aim to stimulate your curiosity and raise interest in using artist-in-residence opportunities for your artistic development. These workshops are only the beginning…!

Welcome to apply for residencies for March-December period in 2013 - deadline for residency applications isFebruary 15, 2013.

Nida Art Colony (NAC) welcomes proposals from artists, designers, architects, curators, and art researchers for its upcoming summer-autumn residencies on the Baltic Sea coast in the Curonian Spit National Park, Lithuania.

NAC is located in a remote and beautifully distinct landscape next to the resort town of Nida. The residency is most appropriate for those artists who are seeking time for experiments and research, value the creative process and a big studioor open-air space as well as for those who love coincidences and the chance to meet artists from all over the world. Parallel to the residency programme, the Colony building also hosts student workshops and international artistic projects for shorter periods of time.

The Colony provides the necessary living and social conditions to ensure a comfortable environment for the five artists-in-residence. Each of the five residencies is set out on two floors with 65 square meters of floor space and feature all the necessary facilities. The colony is situated about 600 meters away from the sand dunes, and the beach. More information on activities (like the curated exhibition Taking Time) and facilities can be found on our website and Facebook. To get a sense of Colony life and to see A.I.R. portfolios, please check the Nida Art Colony Log.

Two types of residencies are available: individual and thematic residencies. Please indicate the selected type of residency in the subject line and follow the application guidelines.

Individual Residencies
Duration: one to four months, between June and December 2013. The recommended duration of a residency is 2 months.
Applicants from all over the world may apply.
Grants: No grants are currently available; selected candidates are issued a letter of support for individual grant-seeking.
Costs: Studio and living space rent is 412 EUR/month (June-September) and 312 EUR/month (October-December), including all taxes, use of equipment, communal spaces and bicycles.

Thematic Residencies
Duration: 2 months, between March and December 2013.

Techno-ecologies collaborative residencies are offered in partnership with RIXC. Please send your project proposals based on the keywords and your initial research on the specific Neringa issues. More here about the project Techno-ecologies. Individual and group (up to four persons) applications are welcome from artists, researchers, scientists, producers and curators.
Grants: There are five grants available,700 EUR/month , travel (up to 350 Eur), studio, accommodation and production costs. 
Applicants from Europe may apply.

Critical tourism residencies are intended for artists who want to develop a site-specific work relating to Nida and its touristic aspects. More here about the project On Hosting and Displacing.
Grants: There are two grants available, of 700 EUR/month, travel (up to 350 EUR), studio, accommodation and production costs.
Applicants from Switzerland and Nordic-Baltic countries may apply.

Thematic residencies are supported by the EU Culture Programme, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture, and Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Call for contributions to inter-format symposium on hosting and displacing:
Critical Tourism and Post-Romantic Condition
May 16–19, 2013, Nida, Lithuania 
The international symposium is a part of the Swiss-Lithuanian cooperation project On Hosting and Displacing. The format of the symposium contributions is open: talks, presentations, artistic interventions, workshops, etc.

Call for a Trainee
We are looking for interns to work as a) assistant curators, which includes coordination of artist-in-residency and other culture & education programmes and b) visual communication assistants (photo & video documentation and working with our archive). We offer a unique experience and reference letters for your future career, as well as free accommodation at the Colony between September 2013 and May 2014. You should stay for four to eight months. Please send your CV and a short motivation letter to vytautas@nidacolony.lt until February 15, 2013. For more information, please visit our internships page.

NAC is also waiting for your proposals to make an event (63-bed guesthouse and three conference/workshop spaces). 
Our information partners: www.echogonewrong.com,www.artnews.lt, and www.neringafm.lt.

The year of 2012 for Nida Art Colony was really fast, however very productive.

We wanted to share with you our numbers and images:

Residency programme:

• 62 artists-in-residence (17 from them from Lithuania)
• we fundraised and distributed 18 grants for artists-in-residence
• 5 exhibitions were made by artists-in-residence

More soon...

Welcome to the launch of new Nida Art Colony Log (magazine) at CAC Cafe (Vokieciu st. 2, Vilnius), Friday, 4th of Jan from 9 pm, after it - Radio Neringa FM party.

From Saturday you can also download the magazine from http://www.nidacolony.lt/en/colony-log

Nida Art Colony welcomes five new residents, Gustavo Jahn (BR), Melissa Dullius (BR), Justin Tate (CA/USA/EE) Michelle Mantsio (AUS) and Sacha Waldron (IRL/UK), that recently joined our current Winter/Spring residencies.

Gustavo Jahn and Melissa Dullius form the Berlin-based Distruktur duo. Distruktur works mainly in films, which are presented in screenings, installations and performances. Their work moves between cinema and visual arts, fiction and reality, photography and moving image. During their residency at Nida Art Colony, Distruktur are making a film for an exhibition taking place at CAC in Vilnius (April 2013) curated by Ula Turnau and Asta Vaiciulyte. The film will gravitate towards magick, rites, and the South.

Michelle Mantsio'sart practice includes video/animation, installation, drawing, and performance. She is interested in how you might track something through pattern and at Nida is exploring how this might emerge through the relationship of hosting between environments of landscape, architecture and humans.

Justin Tate is collaborating with NeringaFM Director, Linas Ramanauskas to create a new public space in the form of an art installation/ice fishing shanty. For a period of 10 days, the aesthetically modified structure will provide access for fisher-people in the region to practice their sport. Simultaneously, the intimacies provided by the visitors to the shanty, personal stories of those who come to the ice for solitude, reflection and of course fish, will be broadcast to the general public on the Curonian Spit and those listening abroad on NeringaFM's internet radio.

Sacha Waldron (IRL) is a writer, curator and artist who will be based in Nida for the next five months acting as shadow curator for the residency programme at the Colony. Sacha was previously curatorial fellow at Arnolfini in Bristol. Sacha writes articles, criticism and makes interviews for several online art platforms and magazines. She recently completed her MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London and, in May, will take over as curator for Crate Project Space in Margate.

Welcome to apply for residencies for March-December period in 2013 - deadline for residency applications isFebruary 15, 2013.

Two types of residencies are available: individual and thematic (with grants) residencies. Please indicate the selected type of residency in the subject line and follow the application guidelines.

More follow here Call for residency applications, symposium on critical tourism and a trainee.

Two films are going to be shown at 6pm on 8th and 9th of February.

Friday: MANO NAKTIS SU MOD / Ma nuit chez Maud, 1968, 110 min., N-16.

Saturday:VASAROS PASAKA / Conte d'été, , 1996, 116 min. N-16.

You will find details and application form here http://nidacolony.lt/en/facilities.

The priority is given to applications received by 28th of February, 2013. However you can apply all year round. Please contact us with specific dates regarding availability and capacity.

Part-time position is available from March, 2013. More about the requirements read in Lithuanian version of this site.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FROM ARTISTS, CURATORS, RESEARCHERS FOR INTER-FORMAT SYMPOSIUM ON HOSTING AND DISPLACING: Critical tourism, site-specificity and post-romantic condition

NIDA ART COLONY, May 16-19, 2013

Deadline 1st of March, 2013

In a time where heritage, sustainability and ecology increasingly cross the path of tourism, artists working in remote contexts and tourists often share the observation of similar cultural objects: iconic landscape sites, vernacular culture and authentic artefacts, invented traditions and nostalgia.

One effect of this condition, as Miwon Kwon highlights in the essay “The Wrong Place”, is that the increasing mobility of the art system, involving both centres and remote situations, has led to romanticising the image of the cultural worker. The symposium aims at bringing into question correspondences between artistic practices and critical tourism in a trans-disciplinary context. In contemporary artistic practices, do displacements take the form of a romantic expedition or are they based on hospitality and exchange? And what happens in the stay? What kind of connection/network of competence can be developed in a situation of post-romantic retreat? How to avoid and/or critically read the exoticism potential arisen by these sites? How to deal with these two new genres of colonies – artistic and touristic ones – that are both conceptually and physically re-shaping the landscape?

Key-words and key-questions:

·The artist as tourist

·Artistic and curatorial practices in remote contexts as hospitality

·Critical tourism and re-mapping culturescapes

·Museification of landscape and local histories

·Touristic gaze and the construction of places

·Sightseeing as artistic research

·Nostalgia tourism in post-colonial contexts

·Landscape and contemporary forms of exoticism

·Identity landscape and site-specific artistic interventions

·Localism vs. standardized identities

·Critical artistic actions in alpine and seaside contexts

·Site-specific materials in Nida and Sierre (snow, dam, amber, sand, vernacular culture)

·Staged authenticity and interpreting tradition

·Post-romantic experiences of the picturesque

·Dis-placing artistic practices in rural / alpine artistic colonies and residencies

·Networked retreat for cultural production

The symposium is a 4-day-long event (May 16-19 2013) and is a part of the project On Hosting and Displacing co-organised by Nida Art Colony (LT) and Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais/Sierre (CH). The participants will share their experiences working and living in remotely located art and residency centers as directors and cultural managers, and as practicing artists.

The format: The format is open; proposals can vary from lectures and workshops to performances and site-specific artworks. We are able to provide accommodation and catering to a limited number of participants. Travel expenses are subject to availability.

Deadline: Please send a short proposal (up to 500 words and/or visual material if needed) by March 1, 2013 to: Vytautas Michelkevicius (vytautas@nidacolony.lt) and Federica Martini (federica.martini@gmail.com) with subject line “proposal for symposium”. Swiss and Lithuanian participants are very encouraged to apply.

Interested individuals who would prefer to take part as audience members may apply as “passive” participants by submitting a request with a short motivation letter. Unfortunately, we will be unable to cover your participation costs.

We are thankful for our partners who provided grants for the most of curators and artists. Project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Ministry of Culture of Lithuanian Republic, Nordic-Baltic mobility programme for culture.

«A cooperation project1 in the framework of the exchange programme with Central and Eastern Europe, initiated by the liaison office of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia in
Warsaw.» www.prohelvetia.pl