The jury selection of the BALATORIUM artistic residency programme, a flagship project of the Veszprém-Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture (VEB2023 ECOC), took place on November 14th, 2022.
Applications were open to any artist/duo of artists active in any artistic field or medium, without age limitation.
The aim of the residency programme is for the artists involved to create new works of art through collaborations with researchers, experts and ecologists active in the Balaton region, based on site- and context-specific research. The creations are to be adapted to the artists’ own practice and methodology, promoting the dialogue between science and art.
The members of the professional jury - Can Togay, Diána Berecz, Eva Bubla, Anna Tüdős, Borbála Soós, András Zlinszky - selected the following projects from the 121 valid entries received - in consultation with the Directorate of the Balaton-felvidék National Park:
Ana Brotas: Littoral Cartographies
Mathilde Dewavrin, Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Garance Maurer: Invasiveness
Süveges Rita: Off the Road
One artists is invited to participate in the residency programme:
Gosztola Kitti
Ana Brotas: Littoral Cartographies
Ana Brotas has experience in artistic research, audiovisual communication, and pedagogy. Her practice investigates meeting points between knowledge production, language, and public space. Previous projects were often situated in collaborative contexts and combined interdisciplinary methodologies between art and science, technology, archaeology, and cartography. During the BALATORIUM residency programme, she will investigate the various insects that inhabit the Balaton region in order to develop a series of cartographies focused on the littoral zone of lake Balaton.
Mathilde Dewavrin, Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Garance Maurer: Invasiveness
All three Berlin-based artists have a strong interest in understanding and finding new ways to think with the ecosystems that surround us: embracing their complexity, the diversity of actors or “protagonists” involved and their constant interactions within them. This shared interest primarily lies in their active involvement in the Floating University Berlin. At BALATORIUM AIR, they will investigate the concept of “invasive species” in collaboration with the Balaton Uplands National Park, which often triggers different opinions. What does invasive mean? When does a species fall into this category? How can it fall out of it? From which perspective is this classification made?
Süveges Rita: Off the Road
Süveges lives and works in Budapest. In her artistic practice, she elaborates an ecocritical approach to our relation to nature. By featuring the aesthetic, and technical qualities of painting through color and formal experimentation Süveges seeks to expand the frame of the traditional genre of landscape towards a deeper understanding of the contemporary representation of nature. The main theme of her proposal "Off the Road" is vehicle traffic in natural areas and the natural damage it causes. During the residency, he wants to discuss and elaborate on the idea that nature is not a background and that its isolation (othering) is a prerequisite for exploitation.
Gosztola Kitti
I mainly focus on the aesthetic and social dimensions of the construction and politics of natural sciences. My works range from tackling craftsmanship and materialities through works based on archival research to projects focusing on socio-political issues – from reinterpreting the cow appendix membranes once used in Zeppelins through reevaluating invasive species with participants outside the art world to a long-running investigation into Hungary’s marine imaginations.
In evaluating the applications, the jury took into account the professional soundness of the project, the applicant's previous artistic and professional experience, the relevance of the issues raised by their application and the feasibility of the proposed work.
The selected artists will spend two weeks at the Balaton-felvidék National Park in May. During the residency programme, the artists will present their new works/productions, building on the collaborations started with the Institute's researchers, at BALATORIUM’s Ecology Week in August 2023.
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