Programme residents 2023/24

Eight residents are part of “Finding our feet”, the Sommerakademie Paul Klee (SPK) 2023/24 programme. “Finding our feet” will dedicate time to detailed research and exchange of methodologies and economies of collective working practices, as well as the reflection and the awareness tools that grow out of groups whose practices imagine different forms of relating to each other. It tries to find ways to be more careful with our resources and give more space to pleasure, experimentation and mutual support.

The SPK 2023/24 brings together a group of eight residents:

Shima Asa is an Iranian artist/curator based in Montreal. Her artistic practice focused on the materiality of sound and narrative. In her works, she listened to human voices and silences and explored the spatiality of aural experiences through elemental matter and structural designs.

Alizé Rose-May Monod (Switzerland/France) is a Bern-based artist, researcher, curator and cultural worker. They work situational and multimedia. The choice of the medium depends on the context of production: video, installation, textile, text, curation. Their work revolves around (the practices of) relationships. They propose alternative spaces of gathering and community, for the purpose of collectivization of queer experiences.

Andrea Palášti is a Hungarian/Croatian/Serbian artist and educator based in Novi Sad [Serbia], who works across artistic, curatorial and pedagogical boundaries experimenting with ways of knowledge production. Her projects are made visible through photo-exhibitions, historical and scientific research, illustrative lectures and participatory workshops as means to encourage a nuanced understanding of our world. Working with different communities in diverse informal group actions, she is experimenting with cross-discipline presentations.

Aryakrishnan Ramakrishnan is an artist and curator based in Cochin and New Delhi, India. Their ongoing project Sweet Maria Monument is a monument for a transgender activist and performer who was murdered in 2012 in Kerala, India. The project was showcased in various spaces including Clark House Mumbai (2017) and Kochi Muziris Biennale (2018) and Queer Art Festival, Vancouver (2022).

Halim Ramses is a visual artist & cultural practitioner based in Cairo, Egypt. Halim’s practice explores establishing intimate spaces for critical discourses. As part of Halim’s artistic practice, he facilitates the Re-imagining Egyptology Program which is a space for artists from diverse disciplines to come together and collaboratively work, discuss, share resources and create projects that navigate through the gaps and the silences in archives.

Tali Serruya Gorzalczany is a south-american multidisciplinary artist and researcher working on the political potential of collaborative artistic practices when developed for and with individuals facing different forms of social oppression. Trained in theater directing and in contemporary artistic practices, her work is not restricted to a defined format but responds to situations, encounters, urgencies, possibilities. Collaboration, horizontality, transculturality and transdisciplinarity are thus at the heart of her practice.

Cheshmak Shahsiah is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Iran who works with various mediums such as prints, videos, and performances. They began their artistic journey with graffiti in 2003, and later took part in a number of group art projects in Tehran. Cheshmak is currently living in Tehran and working on a community art space project called Kargah while researching the politics of mourning as a mood of organization for potential collectives to emerge.

Kay Zhang is a sonic artist who explores around the topics of in-betweenness through sound, performance, curation and research. Their curatorial work lends itself with “learning by doing” methods, experimentation which are intertwined with transdisciplinary art. They work within various projects and coordinate different platforms and have an interest in intercultural identities, queer feminist theories and sound ecologies.

Their full bios can be read on our website. The 2023/24 cycle is convened by Andrea Thal. The programme is developed and builds its field of resonance together with the residents. Please visit us on social media for regular updates.

The 2023 public closing event will take place at the public park behind Kunsthalle Bern, Helvetiaplatz 1 in Bern.

*Image above: Diagram by Shima Asa as part of research on listening as a system of knowledge production in curatorial practice. Digital illustration by Rebbeca Gly-Blanco.