Past Residents

Country
Year
Residency Program
Resident Type
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Switzerland

Past Resident
2022: Canton de Vaud, Service des Affaires Culturelles

Artist

Philémon Otth

Philémon Otth’s artistic practice revolves around challenging questions of time and temporalities, history and histories, material and immaterial, transparency and opacity. He is interested in exploring sites and situations by questioning the implications of images and objects within their spatial and socio-historical contexts. Otth approaches these ideas through configurations of form and language, displacement and shifting strategies.

Philémon Otth has exhibited work at CAN – Centre d’Art de Neuchâtel; Plymouth Rock, Zürich; and Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, all Switzerland, among others.

Philémon Otth, Engawa (side by side, end to end), 2020, wooden platform and canvas pieces, dimensions variable
Philémon Otth, Break Out, 2021, iron bars and paint, dimensions variable
Philémon Otth, time for a better world, 2020, beach towel, 1013/16 × 271/2 in. (27.43 × 69.85 cm)
Philémon Otth, He made friend with the bees and they let him know the secrets of the Sun, 2018, cocktail, wooden structure, and bottle, 1511/16 × 1511/16 × 59 in. (39.88 × 39.88 × 149.86 cm)
Philémon Otth, very veto very vero, 2016, glass, canvas, wood, floor dirt, and local honey, dimensions variable

Residents from Switzerland

Okka-Esther Hungerbühler

Germany, Switzerland
Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin
2024

Pascale Birchler

Switzerland
Pro Helvetia, Atelier Flex - Kanton Zug
2024

Elza Sile

International Enemies, dimensions variable, exhibited under (Mir-Nul) at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, 2022
Latvia, Switzerland
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
2022
Zimbabwe

Past Resident
2021: Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy

Artist

Micha Serraf

Micha Serraf is a photographer who explores the construction and deconstruction of identity, belonging, Blackness and masculinity through photography. The artist was born in Zimbabwe and fled to South Africa at a young age. This mobility prompted Serraf to observe his behaviour and that of other foreign nationals regarding the safest shape to inhabit in new environments. This fluid presentation of self, and the ability to be malleable, are used to access forms of acceptance and camouflage. Through his practice, Serraf is interested in demonstrating the evolutionary, fluid and emotional entanglements related to the purpose, interpretations and performance of race and origin.

Micha Serraf has exhibited work at Foam, Amsterdam; Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam; C/O Berlin, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Micha Serraf: Hope Is a Dry Colour
May 19–May 22, 2022
2021 Fall Open Studios
November 13, 2021
I was born in Zimbabwe where my mother and her mother's mother’s mothers were born. My family and I left for the border of South Africa at 4 o'clock in the morning when I was almost 10 years old. These alien landscapes are still foreign to me. Yet I am the alien here. I struggle to feel safe or impart meaning on them. Chipoko is the Shona word for the soul, breath or ghost of a person or a spirit. These photographs are the visual navigation of an unknown and unplaced feeling of a deep nostalgia. An attempt to reach out to my ancestry for guidance and belonging. Each sculpture, a totem. Each landscape, different. Strong, tall, dark. A visit from my mothers.
Micha Serraf, Midzi Yedu, 2021, photograph, 393/8 × 291/2 in. (100.08 × 74.93 cm)
I was born in Zimbabwe where my mother and her mother's mother’s mothers were born. My family and I left for the border of South Africa at 4 o'clock in the morning when I was almost 10 years old. These alien landscapes are still foreign to me. Yet I am the alien here. I struggle to feel safe or impart meaning on them. Chipoko is the Shona word for the soul, breath or ghost of a person or a spirit. These photographs are the visual navigation of an unknown and unplaced feeling of a deep nostalgia. An attempt to reach out to my ancestry for guidance and belonging. Each sculpture, a totem. Each landscape, different. Strong, tall, dark. A visit from my mothers.
Micha Serraf, Rangarirai, 2021, photograph, 551/8 × 883/16 in. (139.95 × 224.03 cm)
I imagine that when we landed here our parachutes were made of silk. I imagine that when we landed here our parachutes were made of satin and embedded with diamonds. I imagine that because we look like them - we would be treated as one. I imagine that once we learned their language and adopted their ways we would be seen. I imagine that once my mother built her home they would allow us to live among them. I imagine that once we brought laughter and rain that our relationships would blossom. I imagine that here was not our first choice. I imagine that leaving home wasn’t either. Yet, we are here now. Standing among the flowers and the stones my feet can feel the soil. Rooted loosely in the ground, when I close my eyes - I imagine home.
Micha Serraf, When we landed, 2020, photograph, 331/2 × 2413/16 in. (85.09 × 62.99 cm)
We must remain vigilant and active in protecting the revolutionary disposition of transforming masculinity, advancing queer activism and disrupting gender more broadly. This project also aims to inspire critical reflections on the quality and purpose of gender in our society. To encourage people to see themselves anew through these images and begin being more introspective with their own gender fluidity, discourse and practice. With gender existing on a vast spectrum of personal freedom, this series seeks to celebrate and make visible queer identities that exist outside the dominant and popular gender imagination.
Micha Serraf, Chizvaro, 2018, photograph, 227/8 × 195/8 in. (58.17 × 49.78 cm)
Our ancestors have roamed these plains since the cradle of humankind. Cave to reed to mud to stone to brick to concrete to steel. Bearing witness to the floods, droughts, famines, seasons and the very rebuilding and restructuring of life itself. They exist among us as giants with a knowledge shaped and formed by the rivers of time and the mistakes that come with it. The forgotten royalty of our people wrapped in modernity.
Micha Serraf, Kukura, 2017, photograph, 235/8 × 157/8 in. (59.94 × 40.39 cm)
Austria, Germany

Past Resident
2021: Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria

Artist

Anna Witt

Anna Witt’s artistic practice is performative, participatory, and political. She creates situations that reflect interpersonal relationships and power structures as well as conventions of speaking and acting. Her public experimental arrangements often physically draw passersby by repeating imitation of specifically coded gestures and developing complex choreographies, thus giving the participants an opportunities for individual articulation and authorship.

Anna Witt has exhibited work at Belvedere 21, Vienna; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; and KW Institue for Contemporary Art, Berlin, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2021 Fall Open Studios
November 13, 2021
Homecoming Outdoor Screening
August 20, 2021, 8–9:30pm
“Trecce in Fiamme/ Braids on Fire (2 channels HD video 2021) is a video installation in which one part is focused on a conversation and, the other imagines the women of Forcella as almost divine creatures capable through sisterhood and solidarity of becoming present in a society which often puts them apart and closes them away, diminishing us all: in fact, the artist has realized one of the videos letting them to perform as heroic women like in classical frescos where the public spaces of their daily lives became the shared spaces in which to affirm their bold struggled lives. From this process Anna Witt came to imagine a set of performances in which the care for the souls in purgatory in a practice of faith evolves into an inspiring conversation between the women of today with the histories of women of the past, despite the great period of time that might at first appear to separate them. Here is an open conversation between mothers and daughters, between the past and the present, that asks what needs to be done, what may we learn from the past, and what the values are of lives which for too long have been lived in the silence of the “narrative of established history”, lives that actually form and make the strength of society and of future generations.
Anna Witt, Braids on Fire, 2021, 2-channel HD Video, 15 min
How does automatization and artificial intelligence affect the working situation in an industrial town like Toyota city? What are its effects on the human condition and what does labor mean to each one personal? Factory workers and employees of the car industry in Toyota city came together to discuss their personal experiences and expectations towards the future of labor, automatization and artificial intelligence. In addition to the discussion, imaginative utopian and dystopian aspects are expressed through elements of body movement, sound and performance. The workers extracted movements of their daily working routines and transformed them into a collective choreography. In an act of creativity, they experimented with acoustic instruments and created a reverse process of production by dismantling working clothes. By carefully cutting of piece after piece of cloth from each other’s bodies, they created a playful yet intense moment of liberation. The work was developed in an experimental collaborative process of the artist and the participants together.
Anna Witt, Unboxing the Future, 2019, 3-channel 4K video, 29:09 min
Kagran and Kaisermühlen are areas in Vienna’s 22nd district that concentrate a piece of the city’s history. Formerly a working-class neighbourhood and stronghold of council housing, it was one of the last bastions of the Socialist Party in its fight against Austrofascism. What interests Anna Witt most about this history is the vibrant utopia, the belief in the collective and in solidarity. The work of the visual artist, who was awarded the Otto Mauer Prize in 2018, is performative and participatory – this allows her to delve into questions that are important to her: How much community still exists in our society? In what way are the residents of a “Gemeindebau” connected nowadays? For Beat House Donaustadt Witt uses an ultrasound scanner to record their heartbeats. At the start of the Wiener Festwochen, the residents open their windows, letting their individual rhythms drift out and join to form a collective sound. The sound of the city.
Anna Witt, Beathouse Donaustadt, 2019, collective performance, 20 min
Anna Witt is following a group of young people in Leipzig while developing a manifest for a potential youth movement. The young adults spent several months realizing the project in close cooperation with the artist. During their conversations, they are discussing their personal ideas of social utopias and are expressing their own feelings within the prevailing systems. By questioning and deconstructing consisting norms and values of our society, they are following their ideas of these concepts and their meanings to articulate the youth movement’s inherent purpose. According to their own imagination and sensations, they translated their manifest into physical forms of expression and performative interventions in the public space. The project has been developed in significant contribution by the group, not just as participants but as coauthors from the beginning throughout the whole process. Utopian approaches are openly express without comment and provoke the viewers to position themselves. Fathoming authorship and hierarchies within participatory concepts play a particular role in Anna Witt’s artistic practice. In doing so, the artist creates fictional spaces to enable a certain distance when questioning society and own positions in a playful way. In collaboration with Maria Bujanov, Phillip Borchert, Anja Engelhardt, Belve Langniss, Blandia Langniss, Chiara Rauhut, Lena Schubel
Anna Witt, The Radical Empathiarchy, 2018, 2-channel HD video, 20:10 min
The video project Care is about two geriatric nurses in Japan. A group of amateur dancers developed a piece of choreography based on the work routines and experiences of two young Indonesian nurses working in dementia care. The dancers, influenced by Butoh and improvisational dance, were in some cases already around eighty themselves. They performed their personal interpretation of the care work as an intervention in the public space of the Maebashi city center, which is feeling the effects of an aging and shrinking population. On a textual level, the nurses explain what motivated them to leave Indonesia and look for work abroad. We learn of a massively aging society in which the care of the elderly—a task traditionally performed by daughters and daughters-in-law—is not a topic of public discussion. The problem and those involved in it do not receive any attention or recognition. The dancers in the video Care interpret the personal experiences and movements of the Indonesian nurses, whose existence in society remains largely invisible. Closeness, physical contact, self-surrender, allowing oneself to be carried, empowerment, and disempowerment are important themes of interpersonal relations, which always concern the dignity of the individual and are thus politically charged.
Anna Witt, Care, 2017, HD video, 18:12 min

Residents from Austria

Björn Kämmerer

Austria
Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria
Studio #212

Malte Zander

Germany, Austria
Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria
Studio #218

Jojo Gronostay

Germany, Ghana, Austria
Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria
2023