OPEN CALL
for research/ production residencies at Jester in 2023

Deadline: 18.12.2022*

*This is the first out of four open calls. The following open calls will be published in March, July, and November 2023 (subscribe to our newsletter on the website to stay up to date about the upcoming deadlines).

Are you an artist looking for a place to develop your research in an environment that supports experimentation? A working period at Jester might be what you are looking for. In 2023 Jester opens its facilities to several artists selected on the basis of an open call. As one of them, you will enjoy access to Jester’s facilities and resources, and you will receive the team’s support in developing your project. 

About Jester

As a lively organisation for contemporary art, Jester works hands-on to create distinctive projects, in which development and presentation are central. Jester takes some of the principles of improv acting as the base for its programme and organisation. The combination of living (residency), working (different workplaces) and making public (via exhibitions, film screenings, performances, lectures, test set-ups, online and offline) offers an opportunity to experience an ever-changing constellation, where different artistic trajectories can run in parallel or overlap in time and space.

Jester is located at the heart of an area in development (on the C-mine site in Genk) – a focal point where various global transformation processes and their economic, ecological and demographic consequences manifest themselves and become tangible. Genk is located in the heart of Euregio, just a stone’s throw away from Aachen, Dusseldorf, Maastricht, or Liège.

Jester is a small organisation with big ambitions. She operates like a spider in the web of the various collaborations she set up locally, nationally and internationally. Jester creates a core program around a small group of international artists, and she also welcomes other artists, on the basis of an open call, to come to Genk and produce works or stay in the residency for research.

What we offer?

Jester is currently operating between two locations: an exhibition space in the Energy Building on the C-mine site, and the workplaces based at the Casino Modern in Genk. At the end of 2023, Jester will move to the new facilities located on the C-mine site.

– Jester facilities

During your working period you can make use of our multidisciplinary workshops (wood, ceramics, metal, word workshop, digital studio). More information about the workshops and their equipment can be found here.

The apartment is located in the vicinity of the workshops and can host up to 3 artists simultaneously.  You will be staying in a separate room but sharing the kitchen, living room and bathroom with 2 others.

– Coaching and network

Upon your arrival you will receive a short technical introduction to the workplaces after which you can work independently. Some prior knowledge of the techniques used is therefore useful. In addition, there is a pool of freelancers that artists can call upon (for an additional fee).Our artistic and production team is also there to help you develop your project during studio visits, by sharing their expertise and network. During your stay at Jester, you will have an opportunity to meet other residents and/or artists currently involved in Jester’s programme.

The team of Jester will make sure you have a warm welcome to Genk and can help you reach other people – local actors, experts, and curators – that could support your research. We provide a volunteer as a buddy that will show you around the town.

– Communication

As an open-call resident, your name will be featured on Jester’s website and announced in a newsletter.

Residency time frame 

The residency must take place in 2023 and last between 2 and 12 weeks. Your stay can be divided across different months. 

How to apply?

To apply, send us your portfolio, motivation letter (max 500 words), and a short proposal (max 1000 words), in which you outline the subject of your research, and the steps you want to undertake while in Genk. If it is feasible/relevant to your project, you can list your production needs. Do not forget to include your preferred residency time frame. The eventual duration will be agreed upon based on the selected artist’s availability and Jester’s programme.

Send your application in one PDF to application@jester.be
(subject: Name, Surname, Open Call Jester 2023).

If your portfolio involves video, please provide Vimeo/ Youtube links.

The deadline for applying is up to and including December 18, 2022.

The results of the open call will be announced at the latest 2 weeks after the deadline.
The selection is made by the Jester team.

All applicants will be personally notified, but due to the number of applications, we are unable to provide individual feedback.

Costs

The cost of a weekly stay at Jester is 200 euros (incl. VAT). 

This includes accommodation, the use of all workshops, a technical introduction, and studio visits. 

Additional fees are charged for the use of materials and to cover the consumption costs for ovens, welding machines, printers, etc. The rates for the open call artists are lower than those for external clients.

Your residency at Jester can be self-financed or supported by an external funding body (Jester does not provide financial support for the open call projects).

Additional Funding

We encourage the applicants to apply for additional funding. For successful applicants, Jester can offer advice on relevant funds and a support letter. 

If you’re an artist based in Flanders, you may be eligible for additional residency or project funding via the Flemish Community. When planning your residency, it is good to keep the following deadlines in mind:

– Project subsidy: deadline for submission – 15 March 2023. / Results – before 15 July 2023.

– Project subsidy: deadline for submission – 15 September 2023. / Results – before 15 January 2024.

– Residency subsidy: deadline for submission – 2 months before the start of the residency. / Results in two months from submission.

Jester
our new organisation

Be Courageous

Listen. Truly Listen

Be accepting

Don’t Be Clever

Trust – Others, Yourself and the Unknown

Be (in the) present

It is with great pride and excitement that we announce the merger of two well-known organisations for contemporary art, FLACC and CIAP, into a new organisation which we have chosen to name Jester*. You can find us here: www.jester.be

Over the past few years, the teams at FLACC and CIAP have been working hard to find a common direction that preserves the special qualities of both organisations in Jester. In this way, the strong solo exhibitions, editions and publications for which CIAP is known, together with the deepening of particular visions or the possibilities for material experimentation, which lie at the core of FLACC, will be brought to the fore through the new programming.

CIAP has traditionally been a members’ organisation. Jester embraces its members, makes room for member projects and aims to further serve increasingly more members from its future location in Genk. FLACC has a tradition of accommodating artists in Genk at different times so that they may work with proper focus and attention. This residency operation will also be retained in Jester.

© 51N4E

Soon Jester will be working from its own home, built on the large former mining site C-mine. This is a hub where various global transformation processes and their economic, ecological and demographic consequences manifest themselves and become tangible through art and culture. Through its stimulating, generous and critical presence, Jester aims to make a significant contribution to the creation of a locally anchored, vibrant cultural oasis, with national and international reach.

Determined to create a distinctive and singular experience, the team at Jester decided to start from a number of basic concepts found in improvisational theatre. These will provide us and everyone involved in the programme with the opportunity to respond to current events or changes at any given time. Improv makes it possible to create a story whose direction and outcome are not always determined.

The team at Jester invites you to join them in Genk. In the course of 2022, you will be able to enjoy the programme that emerged from FLACC and CIAP’s ongoing programming. From 2023 onwards, Jester invites you to embrace the unknown. Are you curious to see how we work towards a new story? Join us as a member and follow us via our newsletter or social media!

*Jester is a professional joker at a medieval court, who is allowed to hold up a mirror to the monarchs. The stories jester tells are laced with humour, yet often have a serious message at their core.

Open Call
Workshop application writing

Do you want to apply for a subsidy? Are you on the verge of applying for a residency? Then this workshop offers a suitable theoretical and practical preparation for writing your application. Katrien Reist (State of the Arts) will lead a workshop that consists of two work sessions. Please make sure you can attend both of them.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

• Dates: Saturday 19 February at 10.30 a.m. – 4.30 p.m. and Saturday 12 March at 10.30 a.m. – 4.30 p.m.
• Location: Z33, Bonnefantenstraat 1, 3500 Hasselt
• Registration: Register, the latest on Thursday 10 February, via this link: https://www.z33.be/workshopreeks/
• Price: Free

VONK, Z33 and CIAP/FLACC join forces and start the year with a series of workshops around the practice of the visual artist. These workshops will help you take your first steps and offer you handy tools to put into practice.

The workshops are intended for professional, semi-professional and/or starting contemporary artists with a connection to Limburg and who have followed professional art training. We kick off with the dossier writing workshop. The workshops are held in Dutch, are free of charge and include lunch. The number of places is limited.

Keep an eye on our website for more information about the following workshops in the near future:

• Saturday 11 June | Workshop on strategic thinking and business management
• Saturday 24 September | Practical workshop: How to photograph my work with a smartphone?
• Saturday 19 November | Portfolio Days

Apples & Oranges
Open call 2021 (extended)

APPLES & ORANGES

Combining a curated fair with a lively public programme of performances, interventions, and talks, the event presents a variety of material, digital, and performative approaches to artists’ publications. It not only provides a platform for artists and their works, but by reaching across disciplinary boundaries, it stimulates refreshing interactions and new connections between participants and public.

FOR WHOM?
Artists from all backgrounds, in all stages of career development, who engage in experimental publishing and writing practices are welcome to apply.

HOW TO APPLY?

Send the following documents to communicatie@ciap.be:
– your CV
– a short portfolio or a link to your website
– a short description (ca 200 words) of your idea for participation –  What would like to present during Apples & Oranges?

The deadline for sending in the applications is Tuesday, the 7th of September 2021, at 23:59. Please send the files in PDF-format only.

PROCEDURE
The fair section and public programme are curated by a group of professionals from the partner organisations (see below). The selection takes place on invitation and via this open call. In the selection process, the quality and diversity of included practices will be taken into account. The list of the invited artists will be announced in mid-August, and the results of the open call will be made known in early September.

PRACTICAL INFO

Apples & Oranges takes place at the compressors hall in C-mine, Genk (1st floor of the Energy Building) on Saturday, 02.10.2021. The fair is open to public from 12 am to 18 pm. The participants can build up between 9 and 12 am (lunch provided) and deinstall after 6 pm.

We provide each participant with infrastructural and curatorial support. There is no participation nor representation fee, which means that all revenue goes directly to the artists. The entry for the public is free.

ORGANISERS

Apples & Oranges is organised by CIAP platform for contemporary arts, in collaboration with Krieg (Hasselt), FLACC workspace for visual artists (Genk), B32 (Maastricht), Zero- Desk / Carl Haase, and C-mine Genk.

Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg
becomes the new artistic director

photo: Roosje Klap

The two merging organisations appoint a joint artistic director to build together the common future on the C-mine site.

Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg (NL), curator and initiator working from Europe and the US has been appointed as new artistic director of CIAP, platform for contemporary art, and FLACC, workplace for visual artists. She will lead the two organisations through the exciting transition period into the common future. Still this year, CIAP and FLACC will merge, and in 2022, already as one organisation will move to a new location on the C-mine site in Genk.

Gouwenberg brings to the table a fresh perspective, underpinned by a substantial international network and experience. Currently, she is the co-curator for Melanie Bonajo’s presentation for the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2022. 

After running multidisciplinary exhibition space Expodium in Utrecht, Gouwenberg participated in the renowned de Appel Curatorial Program (2006-07) and worked at the research and production platform If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (2007-11). During the directorship of Defne Ayas at Kunstinstituut Melly, she was involved in major projects by Alexandre Singh, Michael Portnoy, and Rana Hamadeh. In 2010, together with artist Keren Cytter and curator Kathy Noble, Gouwenberg initiated A.P.E. (art projects era), which focused on the development of projects that cannot be realised within traditional institutional formats or frameworks. Since 2012 she’s part of the short and mid-length committee at International Film Festival Rotterdam. In 2014, she founded the multidisciplinary residency program Deltaworkers in New Orleans together with Joris Lindhout, and in 2017, Gouwenberg joined the Performa team in New York as producer at large. 

The new director takes up the position in a particularly complex, fragile, and challenging context, but also one that requires new perspectives and experimental strategies.
“It is an unprecedented time that calls for outspoken choices,” she says. “We are at the tail end of the pandemic that has held up a mirror to the fast-paced, overcrowded capitalist world and forced the individual, on the one hand, to revert to small, local, sometimes lonely, physical ways of living, and on the other hand, expanded the possibilities of communicating, working, and presenting online. It is, therefore, a particular moment to look at how two strong locally-anchored institutions can consciously operate locally as well as internationally; in physical and virtual space.”

CIAP and FLACC are convinced that Gouwenberg, with her versatile experience and unfettered enthusiasm, is the best person to take the lead in shaping the vision for the new organisation.
“The DNA of the new organisation, originating from two existing institutions, is rich, layered and offers opportunities,” said the freshly appointed director. “It’s like a lichen where ‘1+1=plural’ is the rule and where specific combinations of chromosomes create the shapes that no one could have imagined in advance. It is this polyphony that bears potential and that drives me. The program that I want to develop for FLACC/CIAP will be tailor-made and will have a socio-political focus, building on the already existing basis. The organisation grows from the programme, in which the importance of art, the interest of artists and the connection with the public are key.” 

Laila Melchior & Koi Persyn
winners of the 2021 Lichen prize

Laila Melchior & Koi Persyn

Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatorium and CIAP are delighted to announce CS alumni Laila Melchior and Koi Persyn as the winners of the 2021 Lichen Prize for Curators. The jury appreciated the duo’s curatorial concerns with questions of place and landscape, interests that align with those of CIAP, and which will be the ground for a fertile collaboration and exchange. The exhibition will take place in 2022.

About the curators

Laila Melchior is an independent curator and researcher investigating the fields of contemporary art and audiovisual aesthetics. She holds a master’s degree in Communication and Culture from UFRJ (BR) and a postgraduate degree in Curatorial Studies from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK). Laila Melchior works on projects related to arts, film and theory, looking to incorporate perspectives from the Global South into her projects. As a curator, she collaborates with art institutions. Some of her recent projects are the exhibitions Trojan Horse Behind Glass; Time, Times. Half a Time; and The Ghost Library. She is one of the founders and part of the curatorial board of Aventuras do Pensamento, a series of encounters between a children-composed audience and some of the greatest contemporary Brazilian thinkers, scientists and artists that since 2016 discusses pressing issues in the political, innovative and creative horizon of the country. Laila Melchior has also designed the Young Curators Programme, a project which she coordinates to promote a greater engagement of emerging curators in the frame of Belgian participation in the Venice Biennale. Formerly a lecturer at the undergraduate course in Cinema and Digital Media at IESB (Brasilia – BR), she has also published and presented academic works.

Koi Persyn is a Brussels-based independent curator and visual artist. He obtained a master’s in Fine Arts at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) after which he completed a postgraduate in Curatorial Studies, also at KASK. During his studies, Koi Persyn founded and co-curated STOCK, a three-year-running residency programme in Het Paviljoen, Ghent. His artistic and curatorial trajectory encompasses notions of authorship and collectivity, employing experimentation with exhibition formats in unconventional locations. His curatorial projects focus on process-based, experimental, and interdisciplinary practices through open-air, collaborative, site-specific exhibitions and residency programmes. Koi Persyn participated in the exchange programme with BIDAI college of arts in Kanazawa (JP) and worked in the framework of the Young Curators Program as a mediator for the Belgian Pavilion at the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale. Koi Persyn is currently co-curating Publiek Park, an open-air group exhibition in the Citadelpark of Ghent, as part of his activities in the frame of the Young Friends of S.M.A.K.

About Lichen prize

As a testing ground for visual thinking in diverse forms, CIAP and Curatorial Studies — KASK & Conservatorium have initiated and endowed the Lichen Prize to foster and support curatorial innovation in Belgium. The call is open to all alumnae and alumni of the Curatorial Studies programme — as well as of its earlier forms: TEBEAC and ‘Beheer, conservatie en restauratie van museale collecties hedendaagse kunst’ — regardless of age, current professional status or geographic location. In fall 2020, CIAP and Curatorial Studies proudly presented Petrichor, a group exhibition curated by the laureate of the 2019 edition, Lucie Ménard.

Exhibition view: Petrichor, an exhibition curated by the winner of Lichen 2019, Lucie Ménard.

CIAP and FLACC
join forces at C-mine

Maximiliaan Royakkers

Promising developments on the art scene in Limburg as two organisations join forces. Still this year, CIAP, platform for contemporary art, and FLACC, workplace for visual artists, will merge into one organisation, which will move to a new location at
the C-mine site in 2022.

In 2018, the news of the future house for FLACC and CIAP at the C-mine site was announced. The architectural project, designed by 51n4e (Brussels) and Point Supreme (Athens), combines ateliers, living facilities, indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces, café, and a public garden. The project is supported by the city of Genk and the Flemish Community. In the last two years, CIAP and FLACC have been working behind-the-scenes on this new infrastructure, but also on the model for the new organisation that will inhabit it.

The two organisations jointly decided that merging is in the best interest of their shared future. The new organisation will combine the strengths and functions of both partners: FLACC, with their long-standing expertise as a workplace, supporting artistic development, and CIAP, with 45 years’ experience in mediating and exhibiting contemporary visual arts.

Working in synergy with C-mine and other like-minded partners, this new organisation will offer artists space, time, and resources to experiment and develop new projects, but also share them with others. With a broad array of activities — workshops, exhibitions, talks, social gatherings, and many more — it will become a new meeting space for artists, art lovers, neighbours, and broader public. The innovative, creative environment of C-mine and Genk — the city in constant transformation — provides a fertile ground for this new development. In line with Genk’s past as “station d’artistes”, a beloved refuge for artists, researchers, and thinkers, this unique context offers an opportunity to become an artist colony of the future.

CIAP and FLACC are currently developing and sharpening the profile, programme, and identity of this new organisation. Meanwhile, you can follow their current programmes via their individual websites.

CIAP & FLACC
a new house

In the coming years, CIAP (Hasselt) and FLACC aim to jointly build a new future on the C-mine site (Genk) with a new infrastructure that is to become the home for both organisations.

C-mine is a former mining site that was renovated in 2010; today it is a dynamic place for culture, art, architecture, education, science, research and technology. It is in this location and on the basis of a strong level of cooperation that both organisations will build – and the term building can be taken quite literally in this instance – their new infrastructure in the coming years.

CIAP, FLACC and the City of Genk are therefore pleased to announce that the architectural offices 51n4e (Brussels) and Point Supreme (Athens) have submitted the winning design for the new building. The Belgian-Greek duo succeeded in convincing the jury with a design that consists of 4 sustainable buildings that create a stimulating, flexible and innovative working environment.

The proposal incorporates the individual character of the site, but also makes bold statements about the future. The new building is to become a home for artists: either in residence or visiting, on the eve of a breakthrough or with heaps of experience, or with a need for repose or a desire to produce, reflect or experiment. We hope it will also be a place where you will feel at home.

The estimated time of completion is currently set for the spring of 2023.