ENdangered ENsemble is a call for two artistic residencies aimed at artistic ensembles/assemblies wishing to explore contemporary practices and languages, with a focus on a queer Mediterranean perspective.
The title ENdangered ENsemble speaks of assemblies that are endangered or in danger. Assemblies here signify aggregates, agglomerations, concatenations of bodies and desires—multiple, intermittent, impure collectivities. Different, heterogeneous pieces coming together to do, to think, to create—to be more than one.
Assemblage evokes a way of conceiving the world and the human/more-than-human relationships open to complexity and continuous transformation. Assemblage is an ongoing progress.
Instead, the danger lies in the context where these assemblages are forced to exist. In our country, artists often confront a sense of lack, as if trapped in a creative void, amidst the scarcity of resources, spaces, and time. Dissident sexualities, racialized, diasporic subjectivities, and those from the margins are also endangered.
This call intends to explore the limitations and potentialities of the Italian and Mediterranean artistic scene, challenging the constraints that sometimes limit our imagination.
We use the term queer not as a fixed identity, but as a political stance. We recognise that there are many ways of being queer, and we are committed to creating a space that welcomes, celebrates and supports this richness, through intersectional and anticolonial action. Queer is not merely a subject matter but a way of doing, of experimenting with forms and languages in and around the scene—crooked processes, bold and unconventional inventions.
We wish to move beyond the norms and linguistic frameworks of Northern Europe, as well as the protocols of inclusiveness and safety that often confine dissident or marginalized subjectivities. Our focus is on a decentralized perspective that acknowledges the importance of geography and cultures in shaping identities and experiences.
This is why we seek a Mediterranean perspective, with a meridian gaze challenging the boundaries imposed by the North-South relationship, both within the European context and in Italy, where the art scene appears increasingly fragmented along the North-South axis. We aim to shift away from the notion of a more “emancipated” Northern Europe and turn our gaze toward the Mediterranean, fractured by the violence of migration policies, seeking the threads of new relationships, starting from the artists’ creation.
We pursue this by paying attention to several key issues, summarized below:
→ Ensemble: We seek proposals that explore the concept of ensemble in innovative ways. We welcome individual works within collective networks, temporary encounters, collective works fostering exchange between Italian and non-Italian artists, creating bridges between Italian and non-Italian settings. Established, temporary, or misaligned artistic ensembles, unexpected or ancient collaborations are all welcomed.
→ Alliances and Relationships: We ask all participants to trace and nominate alliances and relationships with places, groups, and communities they collaborate with, or whose work crosses or resonates with theirs. We aim to create a mobile and expanded mapping that transcends individual authorship.
→ Temporality: We accept projects of different time frames—new, invented, under construction, or already existing. We also welcome projects that have failed or been abandoned due to environmental conditions. We aim to challenge the idea of novelty demanded by the art market and emphasize practices and their multiple lives.
→ Innovation in Forms and Languages: We invite participants to explore and experiment with new forms, languages, and formats of the scene, creating counteractions, new dramaturgies, compositions. Practices and processes before projects.
Conditions of the call
Selected projects will receive:
→ A two-week residency at BASE Milano with a fee of € 3000.00 net of VAT and before any taxes, which includes:
→ Access to the YES ROOM studio for two weeks on a 9:30 A.M.- 6:30 P.M. schedule
→ Accommodation at casaBASE in a quadruple room (plus possibly other accommodation, for two more 2 people)
→ Opportunities to meet and exchange with the curators of the call and BASE staff
→ Coverage of accessibility fees for specific needs
Timeline
Application submission deadline: May 10, 2024, midnight (CET). Results will be announced by May 25, 2024. Residency Periods: (residency may be held in one of two periods)
→ June 17 – June 30
→ July 22 – August 4
How to get involved
→ Send a detailed proposal of your artistic project, including objectives, methodology and how you intend to address the proposed themes.
→ Include a brief biography and a portfolio of your previous work.
→ Indicate alliances and relationships with places, groups and communities you intend to involve in your project.
→ The call is open to artists and creatives of all nationalities and disciplines.
This call is in English. In order to be able to reach all artists and creatives (or try to, at least!) we have also published the call in Italian and Arabic.
For more information, contact us at residenze@base.milano.it
Free movement of projects
We acknowledge that supporting only two projects is insufficient given the quantity, potential, and needs of the contemporary scene. That is why we have devised a practice to share a selection of projects with other research, residency, and operational centers, enabling their circulation and avoiding the need to always start from scratch. This is a small experiment. Soon we will share the complete list of the partners involved in the process.
In 2024-2025, we have chosen to open up the curatorship of our residency programme to artists, designers and creatives to bring new research questions and unexpected looks. ENdangered ENsemble was born thanks to the meeting with Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo with whom we curated the concept.
Calderoni-Caleo met in 2012 at Teatro Valle Occupato and began a shared project between artistic residencies, research ateliers and performances. Starting with the Biennale College Teatro 2018 workshop, they created KISS (2019), a performance project with 23 performers, produced by Santarcangelo Festival, CSS Udine, Motus Vague. For the Queering Platform at Freespace West Kowloon in Honk Kong, they conceived the nomadic project SO IT IS (http://www.soitis.art/it). In 2021 they were part of Flu水o, an Italian Council (2020) winning cross-disciplinary project, for which they created the performative action thefutureisNOW? (Milan, Seoul, Shanghai). In 2022, they created the installation Pick Pocket Paradisefor the exhibition “Expressions with Fractions” at Castello di Rivoli – Museo di Arte Contemporanea (Turin). They are associate artists of the Italian Pavilion of the Architecture Biennale 2023.
In 2023 their latest performance work The Present Is Not Enough co-produced by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo – Slaughterhouse | Project Take-Care, Kampnagel (Hamburg), Kunstencentrum Vooruit vzw (Ghent), Motus Vague debuted in Hamburg.
Silvia Calderoni is an actress and performer, in theater and film. She trained as an artist with the Teatro della Valdoca company and has been an active part of the Motus company since 2006.
Ilenia Caleo is a performer, activist and researcher. She works on corporeality, feminist epistemologies, experimentation in the performing arts, new institutions and forms of cultural work.