Résidences croisées 2010

 

If it had not created the conditions for the free circulation of people, ideas, affects, empathies and wonders, the suppression of Europe’s internal borders would have simply been a customs and excise, policing and administrative measure. These conditions are now in place, but they are not enough: flesh and blood individuals still have to travel the length and breadth of the spaces thus opened, actually make the crossings that history long rendered impossible, make the most of the clearings opened up to trace new paths, which lead them to each other. To sketch out a Europe of the senses, of tastes, of unpublished words and astonished perceptions, souls, desires, imaginations, multifarious accents and colourful appearances are also needed. The bearers of images, sounds and words must find places where they can compare their proposals, their works, their dreams. Spaces must be left open for utopias and the encouragement to see, hear and think even more deeply maintained, over and above what is currently understood, accepted, filed, archived.

Artists’ residences foster this aim, which concerns not only the individuals committed to it but also, collectively speaking, the adventure upon which we Europeans have embarked together. It is also in everyone’s interests that Europe, an administrative, diplomatic and political entity, also become the land of art, of the inventive dialogue of cultures, of experimentation in new forms of expression, a constant awakening and chance discovery of the inexhaustible surprises that freedom holds for us. Thank you to the artists who played the game in 2010 and today exhibit works produced during their residence, Anke Binnewerg, Crescence Bouvarel, Tadas Maksimovas, Inga Meldere, Zahra Poonawala, Letizia Romanini, thank you to the cities of Dresden, Riga and Vilnius, thank you to the European Centre for Contemporary Artistic Activities (CEAAC); together, we are adding our little stone to the grand design.

Inviting fifteen foreign artists to Strasbourg each year and providing them with the very best conditions in which to successfully complete their project here, and, reciprocally, allowing fifteen artists who work in Alsace to spend a few months several hundred kilometres from Strasbourg, have, for almost ten years now, been part and parcel of what we do. This work is, of course, wholly in line with our mission to support contemporary artistic endeavour and bring it to a wider audience in the same way as the exhibitions at our art centre or our activities in the Pourtalès sculpture park. The story began in 1997 with our first involvement in artist exchange programs bet- ween Land Baden Württemberg, Region Alsace and the Ministry of Culture (DRAC Alsace); today and for the last six years, our International Relations department has been glad to work in tandem with the City of Strasbourg and, this year, the cities of Vilnius, Riga and Dresden. And we are delighted to present the fruit of this endeavour today in this exhibition devoted to the works produced by the 2010 prize winners of these exchanges.