Approximately 40 residents with 17 residency projects will participate in the VARES residency programme in 2024. They were selected as a result of two open calls at the end of last year.
The residents of the first half of the year are:
Alastair Howard is an architect from England. His interest in scenography makes him experiment with the mechanisms used in scenic construction, which results in the creation of animated inventions of the VARES house.
Laura Pint is an Estonian architect whose residency work will be based on the word ‘softness’. During her stay in Valga, installations will be made from the leftovers of furniture production both in the VARES building and in the town of Valga.
Anni Saviaro is a Finnish architect who is writing a thesis on shrinking cities and justified urban planning. Valga is an interesting case study for her, and she will present the results of her research to the locals.
DE JENZ is an artist duo Vibeke Jensen & Santiago De Waele living and working on a tiny island off the west coast of Norway. During the residency, they plan to discover the peculiarities of the twin city of Valga-Valka by involving the community and collecting stories, which will eventually manifest as a spatial intervention.
Ben Weir is an architect from Belfast, who is drawing inspiration from the contemporary condition of artists as transient beings. In the residency, he wishes to free heated elements from their usual fixity. For this purpose, he designs and builds a set of heated furniture, as kind of companions for daily camping, where objects are significant for survival.
Ola Lewczyk is an artist from Poland who during her stay in VARES will be creating bricks from locally found organic materials like construction rubbles, dust, sand, hair etc. The project uses making bricks as a way to re-think local manufacturing and connection to our surroundings.
Liis Vares is an Estonian choreographer and an artist. She is curious about spaces that unroll when functionality and aesthetical norms are put aside. She sees the potential in connecting physical and virtual spaces in order to drive attention to and reduce the solitude and isolation that disablement or peripheral dwelling creates.
Jinseok Choi is an interdisciplinary artist who comes from South Korea but lives in Los Angeles at the moment. In Valga he will open an open repair shop aimed to ponder over manual labour, productivity and efficiency in our current society.
Päär Keedus & Karolin Kull are Estonian interior architects who are driven by locality, re-used materials and self building. They are planning a site specific installation in the public space of Valga.
Additionally to the regular residency programme VARES is hosting a group residency with a specific theme: Sketchy Materials Wasteland. The group was assembled via an open call and cosists of seven architects: Emel Tuupainen, Jack O’Hagan, Sandra Mirka, Aistė Gaidilionytė, Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė, Jakob D’Herde. During their stay they will focus, find unique perspectives and take a look at the afterlife of the ever growing issue of cheap, fast and unreliable materials surrounding us. The residency will finish with a group exhibition in the middle of August.
In the first half of June VARES will host a group of regional artists-researchers with their project Baltic Lines. The project is part of a larger artistic research, which focuses on rail connections within the Baltic states and geopolitical dynamics from the perspective of a critical urbanism.
In every month of 2024 at least one public event will be held, where residents of VARES will show their work to the public from Valga and beyond.
VARES is part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme. Residencies are supported by Estonian Ministry of Culture, KULKA, Nordic Culture Point, Culture Moves Europe and German Embassy in Tallinn.
Image by Jinseok Choi. White Cube, 2012, Abandoned furniture and objects from an old elementary school building
