Oron Catts with Semi-Living Worry Doll. (Credit: Patrick Bolger / Science Gallery)
Known for its innovative approach to cultural and artistic exchange, Asialink’s Art Residency Laboratory trials new models of arts residencies every year and with seven successful models behind them, artists can look forward to newer models every year.
For the 2015 round, two new Laboratory models have been offered apart from the usual Residency Laboratory models at 3331 Arts Chiyoda, in Japan and Kerjasama, the Indigenous reciprocal arts residency between Artback NT in Northern Territory and Cemeti Art House in Indonesia.
Of the two new models, one is in Japan at Australia House in Niigata and gives an Australian performing arts troupe the chance to participate in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan in 2015. The international event is known to have over half a million visitors. This is a pilot arts residency program and will be launched with Art Front Gallery as part of the Triennale.
The other model, which is a pilot program open to Japanese nationals by invitation only, aims to explore the connections and interactions between arts and science. Aptly named SymbioticA: The Science of Arts Residencies the residency will be based at the University of Western Australia.
SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory, has been offering residencies since 2000, and has had nearly 100 residents since then. Director Oron Catts says, ‘The research we do here at SymbioticA deals with the way our relationship to life is shifting and it’s quite important for us to see a non-western approaches to those questions.
‘We decided to work together with Asialink to see if we can offer a specific residency here at SymbioticA to an Asian artist. As this is the first time we are offering it with Asialink, we decided to do a pilot with metaPhorest, another research lab in Japan that we have very good contacts with, and do it as an exchange.
Catts says quite a lot of the work at SymbioticA is about learning techniques and one doesn’t need to be a scientist in order to know how to do those techniques.
‘Engineers and scientists have started to treat life as a raw material, to be engineered. Once they are finding ways to manipulate this raw material, artists are also involved in trying to figure out what else can be done with it. But also deal with those profound questions of what it means to do those things to living systems.
‘By having artists from other countries approach these questions, we will get a multicultural and multilayered response which will always be quite beneficial towards the way we look at life and life processes,’ he says.
Using the metaphor of an immigrant, Catts says, ‘As an artist moving to a science setting is like an immigrant who is moving to a new land so you can start to see how those social and cultural shifts are a great metaphor for moving between disciplines not just between different physical locations.’
Applications for grants for the 2015 round of residencies have just opened. To apply or know more, click here.
To know more about Asialink’s Art Residency Laboratory, read here.
