Künstlerisch-wissenschaftliche Recherche zum Thema «Künstlerische Residenzen in den darstellenden Künsten».
Künstlerisch-wissenschaftliche Recherche zum Thema «Künstlerische Residenzen in den darstellenden Künsten».
Artist residencies and/as pedagogy
Abstract
The research project ‘Artist residencies and/as pedagogy’, conducted by the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film (IPF) at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK) took place between May 2022 and October 2023. It was designed as an international project on higher education residencies and was made possible by the IPF through a researcher-in-residence, granted to dance artist and researcher Dr Marisa Godoy. The final report (see PDF below) presents the two main phases of the project.
Artist residencies have experienced a major revival since the 1990s (Glauser 2009: 13), gaining increased significance in recent years as ‘crucial nodes in international circulation and career development, but also as invaluable infrastructures for critical thinking and artistic experimentation, cross-cultural collaboration, interdisciplinary knowledge production, and site-specific research’ (Elfving and Kokko 2019: 10). Residencies impact not only art-making but also the profile of both the artist-in-residence and the host institution. Besides their increasing importance for artists’ careers (European Commission 2014; Res Artis 2019), arts universities increasingly implement residencies in diverse designs and the number of opportunities is growing. Yet, despite the growing number of residencies, and despite considerable efforts across the literature to typify the artist residency, it remains ‘“an open and fluid concept”, encompassing “a broad spectrum of activity and engagement”’ (European Commission, 2014: 9, cited in Lehman 2017: 10). Also, there are no fixed protocols for structuring and organising a residency. Nor do standardised academic concepts of the pedagogic interactions between artists and students exist, let alone about the outcomes of such interactions.
The report below contains the initial findings of a preliminary inquiry into artist residencies within academia in Europe. It considers the potential of conviviality between practising artists and art students, and the pedagogical implications – if any exist – of residency schemes in higher education (HE). It shows that not all programmes have a pedagogical character and reveals some of the challenges faced by the heads of programme in this regard. Although the accounts presented here are anecdotal, insights into ongoing residency programmes at ZHdK suggest that some schemes have a clear focus and design.
Drawing on literature on residencies and on recent anthropological studies on apprentice-style learning, which are characterised by renewed attention to embodied learning (Marchand 2008), the project aimed to better understand the impact of residencies in terms of the benefits and/or value for artists, students, and HE institutions. It therefore involved piloting residency models to develop a conceptual framework for residencies that enables exploring the residency’s potential as pedagogy. This approach went in hand in hand with a more pragmatic emergent model that uses the residency format as a platform for collective research, debate, and action (Möntmann 2019). If implemented, the framework would contribute to creating up-to-date HE residencies, nationally and internationally.
Undoubtedly, several points which are raised here make a case for analysing this relevant but underexplored field of artistic practice and education in greater depth. The groundwork presented here provides a basis for exploring residencies and/as pedagogy. Such an inquiry has great potential to address current challenges and to indicate, through an on-site, participatory and performance-specific investigation, future pathways for developing the kind of immersive learning that HE artist residencies might foster through spaces of conviviality.
Marisa Godoy
31 October 2023