Closed - Open call 2021: On Shelter
Apply now for a six-week residency or one-year residency for HMK’s 2021 year programme ‘On Shelter’. Deadline is 25 May 2020.
On Shelter
Shelter, a place to keep us away from wind and safe from danger. A place to withdraw for warmth and rest, to build strength and form new thoughts and plans. Hotel Maria Kapel was built as a chapel belonging to a 16th-century monastery. For centuries, monasteries functioned as medieval safe houses and centres for intellectual progression. Monasteries welcomed aspiring priests, nuns and monks to study and learn in dialogue with superiors. They ran hospitals and schools to care for their herds, breweries and bakeries to nourish the hungry, offered respite for weary pilgrim travellers. Knowledge of musical notation, medicinal herbs, philosophy and poetry flowed from and was shared between monasteries.
But monasteries were also hermetic representatives of the knowledge of the elites, communities with the strictest codes of conduct, of right and wrong. Our spaces of care are always double-edged, what constitutes a place of salvation, may not be the opposite for another. While nunneries provided shelters for women in worlds that offered them limited possibilities, offered spiritual communion and intellectual community, they were also home to loneliness, punishment and oppression. Religion harbours terrible trauma.
Historically, art too has been a space we might escape to, a romantic site of solace and beauty, a space to reflect, recover, regroup, reorientate. Art can hold expressions of rage and dissociation, of regret and rebellion, of screaming into the unknown. While art may have promised us shelter, our art worlds rarely provide any. Our museums, libraries, schools, parks, streets, busses, ocean retreats, mountains and forests, dark rooms, clothes shops – all of them both shelter and threaten, pull and shape us into obedience, embrace, intimidate and reject us. Secular sanctuaries, capitalist havens, safe harbours.
With this open call, we invite proposals from all kinds of artistic practitioners to think about where and how we can shelter and be sheltered. What do we need sheltering from in this new time? What would our new shelters look like? What are the politics of sheltering, especially in a politically divided world? Can we imagine shelters that are porous, spiritually and politically, that are in relation and exchange with different worlds? What could our worlds be?
Since 2003 HMK has functioned as a residency for contemporary artists. In 2020 HMK is asking: how can we be an institution of care within the limits of an exploitative system, with which we are all complicit? 2021 we will continue to partly reshape the institution to respond to matters of urgency in the support of artistic practice. Emerging from the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, young artists are entering into an even more uncertain art world. In the face of a recession and worldwide changes in how we work, travel, interact, are, we want to address our shared uncertainty and offer our support to artists in the first years of their professional practice. The program also tries to map the needs of our young practitioners in a changing (art) world. Therefore, we invite Dutch-based artists, writers, researchers and practitioners from other disciplines within 4 years of graduation to apply for a residency in 2021.
About HMK
Hotel Maria Kapel (HMK) is an artist-in-residence, exhibition space and cinema for contemporary visual art in the city centre of Hoorn. We are a non-profit organisation that aims to support and assist artists in the development of their practice and the production of new work and promote exchanges between national and international artists, cultural institutions and the public.
HMK places the artist at the centre of its activities. The public programme of exhibitions, screenings, lectures, workshops and publications, aims to challenge perceptions of what constitutes contemporary art, and bring the audience closer to the practice that motivates it.
We are run by a small team and volunteers, and in 2020 we are structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fonds and the local government of Hoorn. Each project is fundraised separately, often in close communication with the artists in residence.
About the residency
We are offering two types of residencies: four residencies of six-week duration and one year-long residency without accommodation that unfolds outside of HMK, in the locality of Hoorn or the area of West-Friesland. A residency concludes with a presentation, often in the form of an exhibition, event or publication.
Residents are offered full and free use of accommodation and living/working facilities. HMK’s studio/exhibition space is located in an early 16th-century chapel, surrounded by a semi-private courtyard. This beautifully tranquil and spacious working environment offers a unique space for reflection, experimentation and production.
The living quarters are placed in a former school building surrounded by artist’s studios. It has a large living space with a kitchen. Toilets and showers are shared and in the halls. We host one artist (or group of artists) per residency. Partners, family and visitors are welcome.
The exhibition/workspace is approx. 9 by 18 m, by 8m high, with 5 large church windows. We make the artistic process available to our audiences by keeping the exhibition space/studio open to visitors Thursday-Saturday/Sunday from 13-17.00.
HMK is run by a small team. We offer curatorial support during the residency and are responsible for promotional activity in relation to the residency. We also offer a small fee, a small production budget and reimbursement of travel costs to and from the residency.
HMK aims to secure funding in collaboration with the artist to provide a travel/living/production budget. Amounts depend on individual projects and HMK strongly advises artists to secure additional funding elsewhere and is available for assistance on this matter.
Application Procedure
For residencies of six-week duration, we ask for the following: a project proposal (max. 3000 characters); artist statement (max. 1500 characters); portfolio (max. 5 pages); CV (max. 1 page) Applications are made via this form.
For the year-long residency, please follow these guidelines: a project description with ideas for partner organisations for your project (max. 3000 characters); a brief proposal for a year plan (max. 700 characters); artist statement (max. 1500 characters); portfolio (max. 5 pages); CV (max. 1 page). Applications are made via this form.
The deadline for your application is 25 May 2020. Your proposal will be carefully considered by a committee consisting of representatives from HMK’s team and board as well as two external committee members. Applicants in consideration will be called for a short online interview to be held on June 2nd and 3rd. Residents will be selected and notified by June 15th. For any further questions, please reach out to us via hotelmariakapel@gmail.com.
NB: Incomplete project proposals will not be considered.
