→ CALL IS CLOSED AND RESIDENTS CONFIRMED
→ Residency period: 1–2 months during February–December 2024
→ Individuals & collectives from different disciplines
→ Funded residency + travel support
→ Applications were open until November 20, 2023
How do we act as architects in a world where spatial practices are driven by market logic? Where building new is preferred over repairing the existing? Where standardised architecture and design is overproduced while unique and regional vernacular techniques are disappearing? Could it be that the standardisation of ways of making and their concentration only in the hands of specialists manifests itself over time in the spaces around us and in the lives that are lived there, losing the unexpected, original and strange?
Somewhat idealistic in our approach, we seek to rethink and practise alternative ways of creating spaces, using already existing places and materials from urban and peripheral environments. We explore manual crafts in architecture by combining old techniques with new technologies and skills while always bearing in mind the wider picture: where materials come from, how long can a building last and what happens after. Instead of building new, our focus is on maintenance – how to creatively refurbish, retrofit and reuse existing spaces, how to harvest and reuse both valuable and fast fashion materials for new projects. Though more time consuming, the extended life cycle of materials is one of the core beliefs of the residency.
With delicate and sparing approach to materials and reuse as an indisputable starting point, we also encourage residents to explore various topics of their own interest, vast or small – from reinventing everyday routines, domestic spaces or objects with an imaginative angle to it, to research-based urban explorations or speculative utopianism and societal critique.
The residency and the town of Valga will become the stage and testing ground for the artists’ projects.The VARES building, a two-storey house that for the past hundred years has been used as a school, will transform into a “House Museum” that will embody the ideas, amusing inventions and theories proposed, researched and built in the residency.
The Open Call was available for both individuals and groups to apply. The timeframe of attending the residency is approximately 1-2 months. From each resident we expect a presentation, exhibition or event surrounding their work to be shown at the end of the residency, for the Valga public and wider audience in Estonia and Latvia.
The choice of residents was made by the VARES curators and project managers Margus Tammik, Mari Möldre, Merilin Kaup, Triin Reidla and Ulla Alla.
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