Onassis AiR Open Call 2021/2022

SEPTEMBER 2021 – JUNE 2022

In times when artists need our support more than ever, Onassis AiR continues its artistic research journey, as artistic needs are at the core of the Onassis Foundation. Onassis AiR, the (inter)national artistic research residency program in Athens (Greece), invites artists, curators, designers, activists, collectives, educators, legal advocates, performance makers, economists, architects, filmmakers and other practitioners from any medium of expression or discipline to apply for the second iteration of The School of Infinite Rehearsals: Movements V–VIII, running between September 2021 and June 2022, in Athens, Greece. The School of Infinite Rehearsals is a program of collective study, research and exchange of practices between practitioners, around two research topics that we find urgent and necessary to address today.

For our second year of The School of Infinite Rehearsals, we want to look inwardly and also outwardly, for the spatial and temporal structures, that affect the ways we live, the ways we act and the ways we come together. How do we relate to others and how do we organize our decisions? What modes of governance do we adhere to and how do we shape them? What economic systems do we choose to be complicit in and how much agency do we claim to implement radical alternatives? How do we institute our knowledge(s) and acknowledge our institutional complacency or complicity?

In Fall 2021, Movement V & VI will collectively explore issues of governance, through the lens of discourse on self-organization (Movement V) and institutions (Movement VI).

In Spring 2022, Movement VII & VIII will tackle areas of economies, by focusing on community economies (Movement VII) and philanthropy (Movement VIII).

Onassis AiR is not looking for answers, but rather for questions, intricacies, aspirations, intuitive strategies that need to be tested, and for ways to imagine other modes of functioning as societies. For our second year, we are refining and adapting some of the modus operandi of our program. Based on the feedback we received from our participants, we will transform our methodological approach in two ways. We are introducing two main research focus areas, explored from two different vantage points. Also, we wish to expand and foster our collective and horizontal ways of thinking and practicing together. For this reason, there will be no conveners or mentors. The 2021/22 Movement Groups (V-–VIII) will be convened by the participants themselves, who will bring their existing individual practices and research interests into the collective research practice. The curriculum of The School of Infinite Rehearsals 2021/22 will be co-shaped by the areas of interest submitted by the applicants around each proposed thematic.

The selection for the ONASSIS AiR 2021/22 OPEN CALL will be done in two phases. Phase I follows a peer-to-peer blind-selection method by the current participants of Onassis AiR. During Phase II the selected applications will be reviewed by the Onassis AiR team together with an advisory board consisting of Grégory Castéra, Binna Choi & Marianna Takou (Casco Art Institute), Ilaria Conti, Karthik Pandian, and Piergiorgio Pepe.

The working language of Fall 2021 & Spring 2022 Movement Groups is English.

All accepted participants will receive a research fee, housing, travel to/from Athens, a collective research budget, and other resources.

The deadline for submission of all applications is Friday, February 26, 2021. All applications must be submitted no later than 12:00 pm, noon (UTC+2).

FULL OPEN CALL TEXT AND APPLICATION FORM

GOVERNANCE: SELF-ORGANIZATION & INSTITUTIONS

MOVEMENT V: SELF-ORGANIZATION | September 6 – October 24, 2021

MOVEMENT VI: INSTITUTIONS | November 1 – December 19, 2021

During Movements V and VI, we will look together into issues of governance from two entry points, self-organization and institutions, as two sides of the same coin that coexist in interdependence. How do we organize ourselves and make decisions and how do the forms of social organization that we create allow for new spaces of care-full listening and participation rather than representation? How and by whom does responsibility get distributed and shared and how can institutions successfully embody non-hierarchical and open processes and become accountable to the artists and communities they are set up to serve? By assembling the practices, knowledges and habits that we exercise and perform within more or less established structures, we will explore what modes of governance we have at hand. Rather than anticipating future forms of organizing, how do we participate in instituting our present and what kind of new openings can we generate to constitute a ‘we’?

ECONOMIES: COMMUNITY ECONOMIES & PHILANTHROPY

MOVEMENT VII: COMMUNITY ECONOMIES | February 28 – April 17, 2022

MOVEMENT VIII: PHILANTHROPY | May 2 – June 19, 2022

During Movements VII & VIII, we will collectively walk through two different paths of exploration issues of economies, leading us to a common space where both research threads will converge. Movement VII will expand the possibilities and approaches of a relatively recent, fundamentally relational vision of community economies that “prioritizes relationships and reciprocity as the true source of wealth and prosperity, a space of ethical negotiation and decision making (…) in which we place care and interdependence at the center, rather the margins, of our politics” (J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, Stephen Healy, 2013). Movement VIII will examine the role of philanthropy within the dominant strategic philanthropic model, as well as other forms like trust-based philanthropy, participatory grantmaking, regenerative practices and other experimental methodologies of philanthropy that are grounded in the core values of the process as power-sharing, social justice, equity, redistribution, transparency, and collaboration.

OUR PAST PRESENT

Driven by its founding principles that are based upon collective artistic research and self-organized and process-oriented ethos, Onassis AiR, the (inter)national artistic research residency program in Athens, continues to evolve as a growing community of peers from Greece and abroad. Like any living organism that continually grows based on information from its surrounding environment, Onassis AiR transforms and adapts its programs with characteristics that are passed from one movement to the next. From individual research needs to fostering a collective research study, the experiential and the tactile have become core components of how we think and practice together. Over the past 18 months, we have experienced different ways of “cohabitation” in the AiR house, that now belongs to more than 50 artists, curators and art practitioners, who between September 2019 and January 2021, have taken part in programs and formats developed by Onassis AiR in collaboration with all of the participants, colleagues, and guests.

All the artists, curators, mentors, advisory boards and other practitioners that have participated in the various programs of Onassis AiR, since the opening of the Onassis AiR house and program in Athens in Fall 2019: Noor Abed, Yota Argyropoulou, Nikos Arvanitis, Margarita Athanasiou, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Silke Bake, Myriam Ben Salah, Tristan Bera, Efi Birba, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, James Bridle, Federica Bueti, Mira Calix, Casco Art Institute (Binna Choi & Marianna Takou), Grégory Castéra, Marianna Christofides, Stavros Chrysafidis, Communitism, Ilaria Conti, Marc Delalonde, Anastasia Diavasti, Dennis Dizon, Sherry Dobbin, Igor Dobricic, Dolce, Natassa Dourida, Bryony Dunne, Alkisti Efthymiou, EIGHT (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), Shady El Noshokaty, Moriah Evans, FAC Research (Penny Travlou), Vala T Foltyn, Elpida Fragkeskidou, Antigoni Fryda, Ioanna Gerakidi, Alaa Ghosheh, Danai Giannoglou, Cate Giordano, Marina Gioti, Ant Hampton, Maria Hassabi, Satu Herrala, Samuel Hertz, Daniel Hui, Laure Jaffuel, Lenio Kaklea, Dimos Kallay (Complex Shadow), Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Evangelia Kolyra, Christina Kotsilelou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Latent Community (Ionian Bisai & Sotiris Tsiganos), Mark Leckey, Locus Athens (Maria-Thalia Carras & Olga Hatzidaki), Manolis Manousakis, Christophe Meierhans, Miguel Melgares, Marina Miliou-Theocharaki, Paribartana Mohanty, Inez Munozcano, Suhail Naqshbandi, Okwei Odili, OnMaterials (Maria Konomi, Rosana Sanchez and Aris Spentsas), Karthik Pandian, Faidon Papadakis, Aris Papadopoulos, Piergiorgio Pepe, Kenneth Pietrobono, Effi Rabsilber, Will Rawls, Dimitris Rentoumis, Tom Sellar, Selma Selman, Markus Shimizu, Miriam Simun, Sumugan Sivanesan, Lito Skopeliti, Peter Stamer, Alex Strecker, Studio Safar (Hatem Imam & Maya Moumne), Dimitris Theodoropoulos, Irena Tomažin, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, Prodromos Tsinikoris, Kostas Tsioukas, Kelly Tsipni-Kolaza, Manolis Tsipos, Evita Tsokanta, Barbara Van Lindt, Hypatia Vourloumis, Ingrid Vranken, Donald Wasswa, Lydia Xynogala, Raed Yassin, Young Girl Reading Group (Dorota Gaweda & Elge Kulbokaite), Ioanna Zouli, 3 137 (Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Kosmas Nikolaou and Paky Vlassopoulou).

Onassis AiR has been designed and is run by the Director of Onassis AiR, Ash Bulayev and Creative Producer/Program Dramaturge, Nefeli Myrodia, together with the rest of the Onassis AiR team, Georgia Giannakea and Myrto Katsimicha.

You can read more about the founding principles of Onassis AiR here:

https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/onassis-future/residencies/onassis-air

Onassis AiR | Onassis Foundation

ONASSIS AiR is an initiative of the Onassis Foundation, a cross-pillar collaboration between the Onassis Culture & Onassis Education pillars of the Foundation. Committed to its mission of extending access to health, education and culture to as many people as possible, the Onassis Foundation supports education with over 7,000 scholarships covering study at the doctoral and postgraduate level in a wide range of fields both in Greece and internationally, investing in curious minds. At the same time, over 1,000 artists who are already releasing their potential enjoy the support of the Onassis Foundation in the form of scholarships. In addition, with over 60 Onassis Stegi productions that tour abroad, it presents Greece at its best to the rest of the world. A restless Foundation that takes support for artists' needs to the next level, launched in 2019 and continues to run Onassis AiR (Artists-In-Residence).

Information

Onassis AiR

16A Frynichou Str.

air@onassis.org

https://www.onassis.org/el/initiatives/onassis-future/residencies/onassis-air

If you have general questions about the application or anything regarding the nature of the program during the time that the Open Call online platform is open, please email air@onassis.org (Monday to Friday, 10:00-18:00 UTC+2). All applications must be submitted by February 26, 2021 at 12:00 pm, noon (UTC+2).

All applicants will be informed by email about the result of their application, by June 15th, 2021.

Please click this link to transfer to the full Open Call text and the online application form:

https://www.onassis.org/open-calls/open-call-onassis-air-202122-the-school-of-infinite-rehearsals