Call for applications: Balmoral residential fellowships 2022

Preconditions
The conditions for all fellowships with the exception of the curator fellowship are a completed course of study in art (MFA or comparable degree) and two to three years (depending on the respective fellowship) of continuous artistic work after the conclusion of the studies until the beginning of the fellowship. Applications are also possible for autodidacts distinguished by special artistic achievements, as documented by exhibitions and prizes.

To foster artistic dialog and interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge of German or English is expected.

Since 2013, fellowships are offered in one artistic genre or one theme each year. This offering, which is unique in Germany, is intended to enable intensive mutual creative exchange among the resident artists. It will also lead to a more intensive specialist exchange of ideas with external artists, speakers, teachers, curators, etc.

I. International residential fellowships
Six residential fellowships will be awarded to international visual artists.

The annual theme for the Balmoral residential fellowships 2022 is “Play.”
This year’s theme deals with artistic practices that foreground performance, participation and communication. It focuses on a confrontation with various forms, strategies and effects employed in artistic play. What the idea of “play” covers here is the great variety of actions and processes that involve experiment and contingency, interaction and participation as well as the creation and modification of rules and constraints. In the Fine Arts, various play strategies have become established, including Happening, Fluxus and Performance, which involve not only the bodies of the artists themselves but also those of the audience.

The principles of conventional performance include the actual presence of artists and audience involved, its nature as a unique, one-off event, and physical proximity. Unlike in the theatre, certain actions actually happen and are not based on “let’s pretend.” It can be observed, however, at the present time that artists are expanding the traditional notions of performance. This year’s theme of “Play” picks up on this trend and casts light on artistic strategies spanning the interfaces between staging, choreography and ritual.

We are looking not only for performative practices intended for a specific performance but also ones that involve (self-) enactment, playing with certain roles and interaction with the audience in the context of other artistic media. This year’s theme aims at a cross-media and cross-genre confrontation with the many and varied forms play takes on in the Fine Arts and with what happens at the boundaries between play and the real thing, between what appears to be and what is and between what is imaginary and what is real.

Expanded invitation for international residential fellows:
Call for applications for teaching position at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts

The partnership with the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts (Kunsthochschule Mainz) includes the opportunity to apply for a separately-remunerated teaching position for the 2022 Summer Semester at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts. This would involve 2 semester periods (of 45 minutes each) per week during the semester.

In this way, the Academy of Fine Arts wishes to foster close contacts between the selected fellow and its students, and it also offers the opportunity for becoming a teaching professional within the scope of an internationally-active art academy.

The successful applicant will be able to structure his or her teaching as he or she wishes, perhaps covering for instance communication of his or her own experience as an artist to the students, theme-related work, interdisciplinary projects, workshops, etc. The professors at the Academy of Fine Arts will be available as needed for advice, etc. The time allocation is at the successful applicant’s own free discretion, and it will be possible to hold block seminars. If you are interested, please submit your teaching concept of no more than one A4 page as the basis of your application, attaching your application documents for a Balmoral residential fellowship as an appendix.

Please note that the teaching position will only be awarded in conjunction with an international residential fellowship in the Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral. The teaching appointment will be carried out at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts during the period of the residency.

Three fellowships last four month and three fellowships last eight month. All residential fellowships run from April 2022.

The residential fellowships are endowed with 1,400 EUR a month plus subsidy to the travel costs and include free accommodation in the Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral.

II. International curator fellowship
To foster dialog between artistic work and theoretical reflection, Balmoral awards a residential curator fellowship to a fellow in the humanities (preferably art history). The curator fellowship is awarded to persons whose university degree (at least M.A.) was completed not more than 5 years ago. For the curator fellowship, mastery of the German language spoken and in writing as well as good knowledge of English is essential.

The fellowship lasts eight month and begins in April 2022. It is endowed with 1,400 EUR per month plus subsidy to the travel costs and includes free accommodation in the Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral.

III. There are also fellowships offered
For visual artist with relation to Rhineland-Palatinate

Relation to Rhineland-Palatinate means (and/or): is born here, studied Fine Arts with graduation here or works as an artist here (except fellowship stays in RLP).

Awarding of fellowships
A jury of specialists will award all fellowships, taking into consideration the developmental potential of the applicant’s artistic or theoretical work.

Additional information and application forms are available on our homepage www.balmoral.de/english. Applications must be made with these application forms. Other applications will not be taken into consideration.