KÜNSTLERHÄUSER WORPSWEDE

Die Kolonie – Encouraging participation
The “Kolonie” (German for colony) is an undertaking by the Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (Worpswede Artists’ Residences) that takes the form of a ‘land grab’ at the edge of the Teufelsmoor (Devil’s Moor) and that encourages people to get involved and become a part of this. It brings together artists, researchers, craftspeople and activists from various disciplines at the Martin Kausche-studios in Worpswede. Die Kolonie cooperates with international academies and art institutions and, on a local basis, regards itself as a source of contemporary stimuli for the Worpsweder Museumsverbund (Worpswede Museum Collective).
Urban art institutions are mirror images of their societies, and these institutions are undergoing structural and thematic changes in many regards today. The dominant funding logic based on ‘projects’ leads to isolated, evaluable containers of meaning where interrelationships, contexts and the transparency of heteronomies are disregarded. The curatorial paradigms of the last ten years – the political and the critical spheres – are in danger of being degraded into institutionalised discussion loops that tend to reinforce existing systems of thought and action rather than questioning these. One result of this is that art and its connection to life are increasingly giving way to an infinite range of possibilities – with the associated loss of art’s emancipatory and connecting potential.
First of all, Die Kolonie is just a concept, a loaded context – only a name. However, with this name we are now beginning our search and we aim to combine individual projects so as to favour a broad narrative and to create new connections. To do this, the Kolonie asks producers about a utopia for their own work. Die Kolonie’s aim is to become a totality of mutually interconnected individual units. Die Kolonie’s contemporary relevance thus results from the dynamics between events and from their societal and ecological contexts.
It is aiming reterritorialise its location by re-appropriating the notion of the term ‘colony’. It intends to continue the history of Worpswede as a fractal: Die Kolonie is a speculation with respect to a location that will eventually consist of numerous smaller copies of itself. In this way, it aims to use the entrance to modernity in an archaeology of the location in order to help to find a way out of post-modernity.
How do we provide our support?
The Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (Worpswede Artists’ Residences) support artists based on its current capacities. In this regard, we do the following.
– Initiating projects of our own and obtaining funding for these projects.
– Producing the projects of third-parties and obtaining funding for these projects.
– Supporting independent projects by providing help with application procedures and also making our structures available free of charge – we offer our studios exempt from charges to artist-groups and artacademy-circles for seclusive work
– in particular we are interested in interdisciplinary exchange beyond established artistic formats.
Suggestions can be sent in electronic form all year round to the following address: proposal@kh-worpswede.de.
In parallel, the holders of annual stipends for literature, music and art from the federal state of Lower Saxony spend up to two months with us. You can apply for this here (only in german)
It is also possible to rent space in the studios at short notice for independent work if there is space available. If you are interested in this, a brief e-mail with a description of your intended work and a current curriculum vitae should be sent to office@kh-worpswede.de.