Ethiopia Residency
Walkscapes- Landscape and arqueology
11 Days in North Ethiopia – September 1st to 11th, 2017
Description of residency program
Hangar residencies in transit is a platform for artistic journeys, which aims to explore the world through the eyes of local and international artists. It specializes in artistic and cultural trips aimed at artists, curators and cultural producers. Our aim is to develop visual art projects combining art and creativity to the travel experience around various geographical locations. The journey will seek to reveal the richness of everyday life and the creativity of the places to visit. National and international artists guide the tours in collaboration with travel guides who take care of logistics on the ground. The Residencies in Transit is a project promoted by Hangar in Lisbon. We start from the international network of Triangle Network, which we make part of, to establish creative world networks in our travels.
Walking as an element of spatial significance goes back to prehistory, and it can be seen as the first aesthetic practice, contemporary to communication itself. The earliest marks left by man or his ancestors, the footprints, date back to the Paleolithic and represent hikes that the first human ancestors made to resignify areas of the surrounding environments or to assign a meaning to unknown areas. If we understand aesthetic practice as a gesture of meaning changing, done by the observer as an act of contemplation, we can say that walking was then the aesthetic practice that initiated the relations between Men and nature that resulted in the structure of art.
Based on the practice of walking as a creative process and as a method of artistic based research, this residence, is a journey to Ethiopia that aims to develop walking and contemplation practices . Ethiopia is known as a place where the first man / nature relations took place, or, as it is sayed since the famous discovery of Lucy, a 3.3 million year human ancestor fossil, numerous archaeological discoveries carried out and their findings to date ascertain that Ethiopia is indeed the earliest known home of human-kind.
Duration of residency
11 days
Disciplines, work equipment and assistance
The Residency in Transit Program is non-prescriptive and process-based, allowing visual artists to develop projects in response to their new environment, so they can conduct research that grows from the geographical location environment where they are working and developing their project in association with the artist leader and with the support of a local guide . The Residency Program promotes diverse cultures and practices through international and experimental projects.
Objectives
Following the perspective of walking as an aesthetic act proposed by Francesco Careri, in his well-known book “Walkscapes: walking as an aesthetic practice”, and considering walking as interrogative, investigative, performative and documentary tool for photography, this residency will take place in the Ethiopia. The journey will start in Addis Ababa to then visit the north of Ethiopia including the Danakil Desert, Axum and it’s archeological sites, Gondar region and the Simien Montains, to finnish again in Addis Ababa with meetings with the local Art Community, Galleries and Art Centers.
The residency will explore diferent landscapes with trekkings and long walks to develop aesthetic processes in three different blocks:
1. the walk as event of crossing (act) through the visits to the natural parks The Simien Mountains and the Danakil Desert and registering this hikings as performances through photography;
2. the walking as happening of the path (route) through the visits to the archaeological sites, stelae fields, and the Desert, using photography and other mediums as an documentation/archiving tool;
3. the walk as story (narrative) through the meeting and presentation/dialogues with the participants of the local Art World and later edition of the publication with the projects/diarys developed.
Application information
Documents to send:
• Filled Form for the Residency in Transit – Ethiopia Walkscapes
https://goo.gl/forms/FVtNJ4RtP9YOl6PL2
• Scanned Passport
• Short Portfolio (maximum 3 projects /15 images) to residencies@hangar.com.pt
more info contact: residency@hangar.com.pt
