This year’s Designer in Residence program

Since 2014, Nova Iskra realizes residential stays aimed at designers and multidisciplinary authors from Sweden, France, Germany and Slovakia. At the same time, Serbian authors have an opportunity to spend a month in Marseille. Participants in this fall season are Karkatag (Serbia), Emelie Rondhal (Sweden) and Charlotte de Sedouy (France).

Residential stays are present for a long time in the field of visual arts or dance and literature, but when it comes to design, the number of programs is negligible, on both European and world level.  

In a collaboration with Swedish Institute, Nova Iskra participates in creating the platform Create in Residence, whose part is Designer in Residence program. Year after year, program includes more organizations, so the collaborations are developed with Slovakia, Germany and France.

Beside Nova Iskra, in this year’s program also participate following organizations: IASPIS (Sweden), AMI Center (France), supported by French Institute in Serbia, Ministry of culture and information of the Republic of Serbia and Goethe Institute in Belgrade, and whole program is realized with a support of EUNIC in Serbia (EUNIC AiR).

This year’s participants are Karkatag collective from Serbia, who will spend a month in Marseille, as well as Emelie Röndahl from Sweden and Charlotte de Sédouy from France, who will spend two and one month in Belgrade.

Authors are chosen based on open calls in each country. The residency has “open-end” concept, which means that development and realization of the new project are not expected during their stay. Every participant gets covered transportation costs, monthly scholarship, residential costs and also gets the support from the hosting organization, that helps the participants to get to know with the local creative scene. Residential stays last one or two months, depending on the capacities of the hosting organization.
As a result, there was around 50 public programs in different countries, that are somehow connected to this program, while around 30 authors had participated in it. More than 15 Serbian authors realized their stays in these countries, while more than 20 of them had worked at Nova Iskra and organizing exhibitions, workshops and lectures.

Emelie Röndahl is currently undertaking PhD studies in Crafts at the Academy of Design and Crafts (HDK) in Gothenburg, Sweden. She also studied traditional (Swedish) weaving for two years at two different Folk High Schools, a Scandinavian institution for adult education that functions as a preparatory scheme for higher crafts education. For the moment, she is taking part in the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, creating a collaborative weaving project with participants from all over the world. The project is called Google Weaving Stop-time. During her stay in belgrade, she will realize an exhibition at the Transformart gallery (November 10th to 20th), as well as public lecture (November 1st) and a workshop at Nova Iskra (November 2nd and 3rd). She is also one of the participants at the international conference Craft and Design in Dialogue, which is organized by Nova Iskra within the Made In project. http://www.emelierondahl.se/

Charlotte de Sédouy is a French artist and illustrator based in Marseille. She earned her Masters degree in Graphic Design at the DNSEP faculty in Toulouse. She operates in the field of print as well as in the digital world, but also likes to stage her work as an installation once in a while. She uses her own paintings as the prime material for her collages and animations. She will also realize a mini-exhibition in Belgrade.

Karkatag is Belgrade based Serbian art collective. It exists since 2009. Karkatag includes machines, interactive and autonomous installations and manipulable objects. Karkatag uses industrial materials and technologies in research of different natural and scientific phenomena, interactivity and performativity of machines, sound, motion. Through public actions and performances, by placing installations and machines in space as urban scenography and props, this collective also introduces social aspects of its work. Karkatag participated in numerous of exhibitions, festivals and public performances in Germany, England, Poland, Croatia, Switzerland, Montenegro and Serbia. During 2015, they won couple of prestigious recognitions for their work. Since 2010, they run their own informal residential space in Svilajnac, Serbia. They also started an open workshop Praksa Makerspace Belgrade in artisitic space Magacin in Belgrade.

During their stay in Marseille in November, They will present their work at the digital art biennial Chroniques (https://chronique-s.org/), where will also participate a represent from Nova Iskra, within a panel session of the following conference.  http://karkatag.org/