Approximately 40 residents with 17 residency projects will participate in the VARES residency programme in 2024. Here we will introduce the autumn-winter residents:
STUUDIO KOLLEKTIIV is a young architectural collective of 7 members: Lill Volmer, Eneli Kleemann, Mia Martina Peil, Saskia Epp Lõhmus, Anna Riin Velner, Katariina Mustasaar, Marie Anette Veesaar. They are dedicated to the repurposing of materials, prioritizing environmental responsibility and raising awareness of the amount of waste produced during construction. In the residency they wish to conduct a research about both natural and reusable materials in Valga. By mapping and collecting recycled materials, they will experiment with different composites and work on developing their own spatial language. The result of the tests would be setting up an installation in Valga, from local materials.
Augustas Lapinskas is an architect from Vilnius, Lithuania, having a background in literature, music, and performative arts, while Ditiya Ferdous is an artist and filmmaker from Queens, New York. Their common practice, Space Nursing involves the creation of Nurseries, or public spaces which recognize urban wastelands as ecologically rich environments. During the course of the residency, they would like to experiment with new recipes for bio-active paint, using lichens, mosses and fungi to produce site-specific installations.
Diāna Mikāne is an artistic researcher, currently working between Riga (LV) and Nida (LT). Paula Veidenbauma is an urbanist, sometimes a performer, sometimes a writer who lives and works between Riga (LV), Tallinn (EE) and Vienna (AT).Together, they form the artistic research collective gel, whose research inquiries gravitate around nuances of everyday aesthetics and the examination of postcolonial practices in the context of a modern Post-Soviet space. In this residency, they aim to study local pseudo-scientific and experimental building-related practices such as dowsing and explore energetic undertones of space-making through somatic movement, embodied reconnection, and human and material interaction.
Anna Tamm (b. 1994) is an Estonian multimedia artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They have graduated at the Estonian Academy of Arts and Gerrit Rietveld Academy. At the moment, they are obtaining a master’s degree at the Sandberg Instituut in the department of F for Fact.
In the residency, Anna proceeds from the issue of preserving the Soviet heritage and focuses on local stories connected to the extendable dining table, Project no. 16, which was produced in the Valga furniture factory and is still present in many homes.
CONSTRUCTLAB is a transdisciplinary design-build network that breaks with traditional divisions of labor and brings together multi-talented designer-builders – as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, curators, educators and web developers – who carry the creative process from the drawing board to the field. Their shared vision of a collaborative way of working combines the creative with the practical, the thinking with the doing. During the residency, an installation will be built on the Estonian-Latvian border collectively with the locals.
Every month of 2024, there will be at least one public event in the town of Valga, in the framework of which VARES residents will present their work and activities to both locals and a wider audience.
VARES is a part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme. Residencies are supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, KULKA, Nordic Culture Point and LoovEuropa ‘Culture Moves Europe’
Space Nursing intervention in Sheffield, Kelham Island. August 2023. Photographer: Lukas Jusas
