Résidences

Research Fellowships for DE/ARCHIVE EAST AFRICA

Center for Arts Design and Social Research (CAD+SR), Nairobi, Kenya
Deadline: 21 October 2019

Image: Syowia Kyambi, Kaspale Archive Intrusion Series, 2019. ©MARKK

Image: Syowia Kyambi, Kaspale Archive Intrusion Series, 2019. ©MARKK

The Center for Arts Design and Social Research (CAD+SR) announces an open call for artists and scholars in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda to apply for Research Fellowships for participation in the DE/ARCHIVE EAST AFRICA research residency.

DE/ARCHIVE EAST AFRICA is a research residency to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, January 18-25, 2020. Co-designed and led with artist and curator Syowia Kyambi, DE/ARCHIVE EAST AFRICA will convene an interdisciplinary group of scholars, artists, curators, and activists in Nairobi, Kenya to explore the politics, meaning, and rethinking of the archive.

OPEN CALL

This open call is for artists and researchers based in the East African Community interested in applying for a research fellowship that will fund participation in the international research residency (January 18-25), including a fellowship, travel costs, room and board. The selection committee for the fellowship is composed of the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research international advisory board, and participants will be selected based on 1) strength of research proposal; 2) demonstrated history of creative practice and/or research in any discipline engaging questions of archives; 3) demonstrated history of collaboration; 4) two single-page letters of reference.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The modern archive is both an instrument and artifact of power, no more dramatically apparent than in the recent history of East Africa, where Britain and Germany used archives as an essential foundation of colonial power. More than half a century after independence, the meaning of these colonial archives remains an area of important social contestation, one which offers the possibility of radically new understandings of the past and even more radical imaginings of the future. How have artists, writers, thinkers, and activists addressed this tension to rethink the role of archives in the East African context? How might we rethink both knowledge and memory in relation to an official record based on exclusion and silence? What might a radical archive be? In the seven-day intensive residency, January 18 – 25, participants – including, artists, researchers, and technologists – will interrogate both the meaning found within archival materials, and the notion of the archives themselves from a post-colonial and decolonizing perspective. The research residency will convene the Center’s 2019-2020 cohort of Research Fellows, who are based in Brazil, China, France, Haiti, Italy, Kenya, Russia, Turkey, and the US, as well as the De/Archive East Africa Research Fellows from the East Africa Community. During the research residency, the focus is on collective dialogue and individual work time, as well as exchanges with visiting artists and scholars and the Center’s Faculty Fellows. The Center encourages each participant to address their ongoing research as part of the dialogue and explore new collaborations with other participants.

ABOUT THE CENTER

The Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, Inc. is a private, nonprofit institution that conducts research on the relationship of art and design to global societies. The Center’s core programs include fellowships and residencies. The Center convenes people from diverse backgrounds and experiences to share knowledge addressing urgent issues in global societies.

APPLY HERE

Submission deadline: Midnight in your time zone on October 21, 2019

For more information, contact: Sybille Gorneille, Program Assistant sybiloliv@gmail.com.