Open Call: «Consciousness» at CAB Patagonia – 2021 (Chile)
Until November 15 we invite swiss artists, architects, or researchers interested in transdisciplinary artistic, scientific, and humanistic dialogue working in the fields of contemporary art to apply for a 2-week residency at CAB – Casa-Museo Alberto Baeriswyl, at the Chilean Patagonia.
Participants can develop research, ephemeral site-specific work, or any proposal that they consider to embrace, experiment with, or introduce into the concept of study.
To check more information on the open call, click the link on the blue box!
Curatorial proposal:
The revision of history, with the construction of a narrative, and the updating of the collective imaginary and language, are the basis for building new artistic, audiovisual, and literary expressions.
To be conscious, to live in/with consciousness seems to be one of the keys to facing the global future. To recognize our vulnerability as a species, that we are part of a whole (called, the universe, pluriverse, earth, space, or other), and that we are intimately connected with everything that surrounds us, constitute some of the important and basic reflections that we might rescue in Chile after experiencing the social outbreak on October 18th, that furiously demanded social equity under the motto “Chile woke up” and after a global pandemic changed the rhythm and the lifestyle in a resounding way, making us, qualitatively and quantitatively, rethink the value and order of our life based on consumption, capital and productivity as the great power axes of our Western culture.
After having worked in the two previous editions on the concepts of “Deep Time” and “Resistance and Power”, the concept of study for this residency will be “Consciousness” and is proposed as a way out. The word etymologically comes from the Latin “conscientia” which is defined as the ability to recognize the surrounding reality, the reflexive knowledge of things. Or the mental activity of the subject that allows himself to feel present in the world and in the reality, or the psychic act by which a subject perceives himself in the world.
Consciousness would be then the capacity we have to become aware of what surrounds us and place ourselves in the place, to know ourselves and the capacity to become aware of our inner self, how we are and how we feel. To be fully aware of one’s own sensations, emotions, and thoughts in the present moment is undoubtedly an attitude towards existence and require effort, constancy, and, above all, the decision to incorporate these processes into our lives in the knowledge that it produces physical and mental well-being.
We invite the artistic community, historians, and contemporary art researchers to venture into this journey and reflect together, with a diverse group of professionals, on the observation, creation, and representation of new realities, new worlds, and new imaginaries.
The residency is therefore offered as a place of crossing artistic and extra-artistic relations, transiting on the planetary history, according to which all the dimensions of human production are internally related to the other. We are with the environment and together we must re-build our world looking for a new entrance to our own existence.
Can we consciously transit through our lives and be a real-time witnesses of our reality? How does contemporary artwork operate as a device of that self-awareness?
– Maria Luisa Murillo, CAB Director.
Image: “La lengua de la palma” , 2020, Video Performance by Gimena Castellón Arrieta © María Luisa Murillo.
