In partnership with Cherimus, a Sardinian art and residency organisation and the Museo Nivola, with Archipelago Network and the Syros International Film Festival on the island of Syros, Grece, Providenza, along with the FRAC Corsica, develops a program of trans-island residencies in the Mediterranean.
From September, 2023, groups of Mediterranean and international artists will be invited to experience a 5-week residency program that will enable them to travel from island to island, meeting communities around Syros and the Cyclades Islands, the Nebbio region in Northern Corsica and the Sulcis Iglesiente region in southwest Sardinia. They will produce works of art and create workshops that will then be promoted by each organization and each island.
This is just the beginning of a project based on the conviction that we need to strengthen cultural exchanges with our neighbors and open up our horizons by reviving the trans-island dialogue that has been the cement of our Mediterranean culture for millennia.
For the first chapter of this residency program, curated by our partner Archipelago, Providenza will welcome from September 1 to 10:
- Marianne Fahmy (Egypt), “Laws of the Ruins” - Film Lives in Alexandria and works primarily with installation and film. She deploys past and current narratives into potential futures that oscillate between fiction and reality. During the residency, Marianne Fahmy will expand her research on marginalised narratives related to the sea and water by investigating various water structures, both ancient and modern, on all three islands that reflect political and social change.
- Latent Community (Grece), “Resonant Rehearsals” - Film Visual artists and filmmakers Sotiris Tsiganos and Ionian Bisai. They work in research-based projects using the moving image as a tool to explore issues of social, political and environmental justice. On all three islands, they are carrying out extensive fieldwork, working with local communities, environmental activists and scientists to investigate how pollution and the activities of the tourist, military and maritime industries affect social and ecological balances in unpredictable ways.
- Elke Marhofer (Germany and Sicily), “Exploring Resilience: Revisiting Practices of Wilderness” - Film Elke studied Fine Art at SAIC Chicago and ISP Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work investigates ecological practices for human and nonhuman communities. During her residency, the artist will look into the not-so-distant past to rediscover moments of indigenous and/or traditional ecological knowledge in harmony with the environment. Rather than triggering dystopian feelings of shrinkage and fear in the face of a world without fossil fuels, Elke Marhöfer aims to explore the potential of space for other-than-fossil-fuel perspectives.
The project is supported by Europe Creative and the European Commission.
