Imagining Ecological Futures - Art & Design Residency Namur

The Goethe-Institut in collaboration with KIKK Festival, its Creative Hub & Fab Lab TRAKK and the cultural center Les Abattoirs de Bomel are awarding a grant for a residency project on ECOLOGICAL FUTURES. The residency program will take place in Namur from the 1st of June to the 1st of July 2019.

The project is aimed at artists, students and recent graduates in the art and/or design field. People with backgrounds in other disciplines are also welcome to submit their applications. We are inviting two residents in total: one from Germany and one from Belgium. To be eligible you need to be resident in one of the 2 countries (for at least 2 years) or to have the country nationality.

Image header © Alain Wergifosse, Microscopies, 2018.

The subject of the residency is the imagination of ecological futures.





The residency gives artistic researchers from various fields the opportunity to work on the intersection of art, design, and environment. The aim is to develop useful arts-led interdisciplinary research tools and art works to examine how cultural practitioners critically address and creatively negotiate ecological futures. The call includes the research field of climate change and global warming, models of human and non-human co-existence and the interrelationships of different ecosystems, in relation to the following questions: How can we reduce our ecological footprint and decolonize nature? How do new models of human and non-human co-existences look like? What kind of promising changes does biotechnology offer? And how can we create a new consciousness and awareness regarding the imbalance of nature and culture?

The project is a cooperation between three partners: the Goethe-Institut Brussels, the globally active cultural institute of the German Federal Republic, Les Abattoirs de Bomel, a new, interdisciplinary cultural center of the Wallonian capital Namur with rooms for exhibitions and residencies and the KIKK Festival. This annual festival for creative and digital culture researches how new technologies will affect art, science and design. The creative hub TRAKK, which belongs to the festival and is a space for collective, multidisciplinary design, places its laboratory (Fab Lab: FABrication LABoratory) at the residents’ disposal.

The residents’ main focus should lie on acquainting themselves with new technologies within the TRAKK laboratory while benefiting from professional assistance. A final product is not compulsory. The residents are free in the realization of their projects. They may choose to create a project in collaboration with the other resident. After consultation with the organizers, the project may also be exhibited at the KIKK Festival in November.

During their residency, the artists will have to participate to a cultural activity in which they share details about their work practice or research with the audience of Abattoirs de Bomel, it can be a workshop, a talk, a discussion or anything else. This will be decided with the artists during their stay in Namur.