ENCURA V: Open call for a 3-month curatorial research residency

About Encura

Encura is a research residency program that aims to promote, expand and intricate curatorial research processes by intertwining the artistic contexts of Barcelona and Madrid, encouraging and enabling curatorial research that do not result in conventional exhibition projects. In its four previous editions, Encura was led by Hangar in collaboration with hablarenarte and Curators’ Network, and in this fifth edition it expands and strengthens with the association of PlantaAlta and the incorporation of La Casa Encendida as a co-leading institution of the project.

Encura’s Object

Since its first edition, Encura is been intended as a proposal not necessarily resultant, that puts in value the processes of research and exchange that do not attend exclusively to the exhibition format as a horizon for the materialization of curatorial research. One of its objectives is to support curatorial researches and promote territorial cooperation in the generation and transfer of knowledge, and art’s ways of doing.

Encura infers curatorial research as a political-affective space that summons its own values, questions, languages and possibilities. Its porosity and capacity to entangle with other agents and practices, imagining polyphonic narratives and actions, from the theoretical and the sensitive, always in a being-with and doing-with-others, also implies an ethical-political methodology in itself, which in turn, allows to question ways of doing and producing. As a specific and situated curatorial research device, Encura is based on the coexistence, collaboration, dialogue and interdependence between the Madrid and Barcelona contexts, which aims to work on research methodologies that challenge the hierarchies and logics of production of proprietary and individualized knowledge. Encura promotes the overflow of disciplines, and slowed down and non-productivist times of exchange and research, enabling the adequate material conditions for an investigative process to have the solidity and degree of experimentation necessary to develop curatorial projects relevant to their contexts, and that respond to the questions and urgencies of the moment in which we live and work.

Encura V Call

Encura V will assign a fee of 4,000 euros for the selected person. Applicant research projects must include collaboration with artists or agents from both Madrid and Catalonia, for whom Encura V will allocate up to 3,000 euros fees. The curator-in-residence must carry out public activities related to the research, and the possibility of an exhibition result is not contemplated within the framework of this grant. This is an invitation to experiment with other types of activations, socializations, openings and formats of the project with a fit in the stable programs of the institutions that are calling for the grant, with a budget of up to 2,000 euros.

Valuation Criteria

Encura V will positively consider those research projects committed to:

• An inquiry of the dispositions of the terms of production of knowledge that mobilizes a critical thought capable of elaborating fronts of aesthetic and political struggle.
• The creation of a dialogue between the contexts of Barcelona and Madrid, and the relevance of both stays for the development of a situated curatorial research.
• The transformation and experimentation, converging different formats and languages of theory and curatorial practice that expand the traditional logics of exhibition production.
• Facilitate research processes and the transfer of knowledge to transversal, not necessarily specialized, audiences.
• The generation of new forms of subjectivity and of understanding the world from critical, non-hegemonic, transfeminist, anti-racist and non-ableism positions.
• The collaborative processes in decision making and new forms of experimentation in relations with artists and collaborating agents.
• The responsibility and degree of commitment that is convoked in research processes and what happens to the knowledges accumulated in the course of these processes.
• The proposal of innovative open source formats for the socialization, visibility and documentation of the curatorial research process.
• The affinity with the programs and lines of work of the organizing institutions.

Encura V offers

• In Barcelona

  • Work and accommodation space in Hangar during the month and a half of residency in Barcelona.
  • Contact and immersion in the local art scene with the accompaniment of a research tutorx proposed by Hangar that fits the needs of the selected project.

• In Madrid

  • Work space in La Casa Encendida during the residency in Madrid.
  • Accommodation for the selected person and work space in PlantaAlta residence.
  • Accompaniment by a tutor of the research proposed by La Casa Encendida, that fits the needs of the selected project, and contact and immersion in the local art scene, facilitated by one of the members of hablarenarte as a mediator between the candidate and the city context.

Funding

Encura V will provide:

• Fees for resident curator: 4,000 euros gross.
• Fees for artists, collaborators and agents participating in the research of up to 3,000 euros gross.
• A production budget linked to the proposal of activation or socialization of the curatorial research developed of up to 2,000 euros gross.
• The costs of all travel between the curator’s usual place of residence to Barcelona and Madrid of up to 500 euros gross.
• The cost of travel between Barcelona and Madrid during the course of the residency.
• PCR tests prior to travel.
• Accommodation and work space in Hangar, Barcelona.
• Work space in La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
• Accommodation and work space in PlantaAlta, Madrid.
• Accompanying research and mediation in both contexts.
• Technical support for the development and production of the project in Madrid and Barcelona.

Beneficiaries

• The call is addressed to curators and researchers of legal age, of Spanish nationality or foreigners residents in Spain, in any stages of professionalization.
• The call may be attended individually or collectively, in which case a representative of the authors of the curatorial research project must be appointed.
• The author(s) of the curatorial research project may not be part of the project as an artist. Those who have received awards in previous Encura competitions may not apply, nor may more than one project per investigator be submitted, either individually or collectively.
• There is no age limit. The project will be evaluated in relation to the moment of the candidate’s professional career.
• Applicants must commit to be available during the three months of the residency.
• Projects presented can be part of an already ongoing research or articulated for this specific purpose.

Calendar and Duration

The residency, which will last three months, will take place in stays in Barcelona and Madrid between January and March 2021. Specifically, between early January 2021 until mid-February in Barcelona (Hangar), and between mid-February and the end of March 2021 in Madrid (La Casa Encendida and hablarenarte-PlantaAlta).

Application Process

Candidates must send a single PDF document of no more than 10 pages to [email protected], with the subject “Convocatoria EncuraV”.

This document must include:

1. Personal information:

   • Name
   • Last name(s)
   • Full address (please, include city and country)
   • Phone number
   • Email address
   • Date of birth
   • Nationality

2. Brief description specifying the main lines of work and research of the applicant (up to 1,000 characters including spaces)

3. Brief biography of the applicant’s professional career, a sort of written CV under the applicant’s own criteria, including links, documentation or materials from previous projects (up to 1,000 characters including spaces).

4. Description of the project, including:

   • Summary of the project (up to 2,000 characters including spaces)
   • Proposed methodology (up to 2,000 characters including spaces)
   • Possible collaborators and artists involved and their justification in the project (up to 1.500 characters including spaces)
   • Summary of a possible activation or socialization framework for the project (up to 1,500 characters including spaces)
   • Calendar and work plan
   • A maximum of 5 images of the project (optional)

   *IMPORTANT
   Requests that do not include the required information and/or exceed the extension limits will not be accepted.

Deadlines

• Reception of applications: until December 8, 2020 at 23:59 (GMT+1)
• Resolution: mid-December 2020
• Start of the residency: from January 7, 2021

Selection Process

The selection committee will be composed of:

• Lucía Casani, director of La Casa Encendida and Marta Echaves, researcher and independent curator, from La Casa Encendida
• Alexandra Laudo, member of Hangar’s program committee, Lluís Nacenta, Hangar’s director, and Carolina Jiménez, from Hangar’s research and knowledge transfer team (with voice but no vote)
• Flavia Introzzi, president of hablarenarte and responsible for the program of residences PlantaAlta and Emma Brasó, curator and cultural manager member of hablarenarte

Commitments of the selected project

• Make at least one presentation of the project in Hangar, being one obligatory in the framework of Paratext.
• Make at least one presentation of the project in La Casa Encendida or Planta Alta, depending on the type of aperture of the proposed research.
• Narrate and expand the research process in Art Spy blog by Curators’ Network.
• Accredit Encura and include its logo, in addition to Hangar’s, La Casa Encendida, hablarenArte, the Ministry of Culture and Sports and Fundació Banc Sabadell in all public communications of the project.

Further information and enquiries:

Carolina Jiménez

[email protected]

T.93 308 40 41 ext. 23