Are you an artist or cultural worker, researcher or journalist interested in the relation of independent spaces and cultural communities? Do you seek to explore the conditions, challenges, relationships and impact of these spaces on their communities? If so, we invite you to apply for our 5-week residency program, designed to offer deeper insights into the world of independent cultural spaces across Croatia (Rijeka and Zagreb), Kosovo (Prizren) and Slovenia (Kranj and Maribor).
Program Overview:
The program is conceived to provide a comprehensive exploration of independent spaces and cultural scenes, focusing on their sustainability, the issues they face nowadays, and their role in supporting artistic practice and mobility through residencies. We are interested in understanding the significance of these spaces within the local community and the various actors involved.
With the support of hosting partners, the residents will be able to conduct their research, meet with organizations, artists and workers from the independent scene. Through their stay, they gain new and different perspectives about the scene and conduct a multifaceted examination of independent spaces, combining artistic expression with analytical insight and establishing new relations between the scenes.
Open Call for Participants:
We are seeking creative and curious socially-engaged participants to join our residency program. Participants will be selected through this open call based on their motivation and previous experiences. Two artists and two cultural workers, researchers, or journalists with a focus in independent culture will be selected from each country to attend the residency in one of the other countries.
The Residency Experience:
Throughout a five-week stay between February and March 2025, residents will have the chance to immerse themselves in the local scene, experiencing "slow" mobility that allows for a profound understanding of the spaces and communities they visit. Artists will conduct artistic research presented through their chosen topic and medium, while cultural workers/researchers/journalists will be expected to provide a textual reflection of their experience.
At the conclusion of the residency, residents will present their works to the local public through small-scale exhibitions, presentations or other forms of public events of their choice, to be programmed with the host institution. This will offer a new perspective on the position and relevance of independent spaces, as well as other observations about the cultural scene and its relation to various communities.
How to Apply:
Through this call, the projects Residency board will select 6 artists and 6 cultural workers/journalists/researchers (2 in each group per country) for a 5-week residency in one of the other partner countries. Residents are expected to produce at least one output of their research to be presented.
Please submit your application, including a CV, a selection of relevant work samples, and a motivation letter which includes a statement of interest with a proposal for your research project during the residency.
Applications will be reviewed by the Residency board, and selected participants will be notified by the end of October. Based on the short-list of the applications, the board may invite applicants for online interviews.
Deadline: 30.09.2024
For more information contact us at info@lumbardhi.org.
For almost 50 years, Nafis Lokvica has taken his cameras to persistently document local rituals, cultural life, the decaying heritage, key historic moments and scenes from everyday-life in Prizren, while he kept collecting photographs and other archival materials from various sources. His collection includes thousands of photographs, negatives, film-strips, VHS cassettes and CD’s, which he has shared with Lumbardhi Foundation.
In the upcoming months, this collection will be digitised and cataloged under the guidance of Bengi Muzbeg and the help of Fjolla Rabi from the archiving team who will closely collaborate with Mr. Lokvica, in the framework of the project “Public Archive”. During this collaboration, parts of the collection will be made accessible to the public in the form of texts, albums, interviews and presentations, as the base of the future public digital archive.
“Public Archive'' was initiated as a project with the support of the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners.
Lumbardhi Foundation extends its book collection with a donation of over 2,500 by Shkëlzen Maliqi!
Art critic, philosopher, political analyst and one of the key contributors to the development of the independent arts and culture scene in the last 30 years in Kosovo, Mr. Shkëlzen Maliqi, has honored Lumbardhi Foundation by entrusting over 2,500 books from his private library, collected over half a century, marking the first donation of this scale to Lumbadhi’s library.
This collection includes a wide array of publications in various languages that reflect the broad intellectual and professional curiosity of Maliqi, ranging from the history of art and byzantynology, to social sciences, political studies, literature and various books about Kosovo and the wider region. The cataloging and organising of the library, as well as the personal archive of Mr. Maliqi will be done as part of the “Public Archive'' project. The project supports the initiation of a library, forming of an archive and a digital collection of photographs and documents in fields that correspond with Lumbardhi’s research focus, to be opened to the public in a few phases during 2022.
“Public Archive” will also support the interaction of Lumbardhi’s researchers with cultural and scientific communities and dedicated citizens of all generations, to create a common fund out of materials currently available in the private domain. This common knowledge will be in the disposal of researchers and the curious in digital spaces and the physical ones used by Lumbardhi Foundation and its partners, in forms of primary resource as well as programs, conversations and publications that stem from the research.
All those willing to share materials, private archives or books, may reach Lumbardhi Foundation’s team at info@lumbardhi.org
We extend our gratitude to our partners Presje for accommodating the collection.
“Public Archive '' was initiated as a project with the support of the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners.
The exhibition titled ‘Who are Ferit and Naikye Bayram?’ prepared by Sezgin Boynik and Tevfik Rada, within the scope of the third edition of Autostrada Biennale (1 07. -11.09. 2021) that took place at the Shani Efendi House is based on the research ‘Nation Formation’.
To learn more about the research and the topics of the exhibition, visit Lumbardhi's BLLOGU for articles published under the category Nation Formation.
Nation Formation was commissioned by Lumbardhi Foundation and its first phase was realized with the support of Forum ZFD Prishtina office.
Lumbardhi Foundation is pleased to present Kinofigurimi: An Open Archive, an exhibition on Lumbardhi Cinema’s history and its relation with modernity in Prizren, based on the archival study conducted by Tevfik Rada and Bengi Muzbeg.
Kinofigurimi: An open archive is an exhibition that contains images, objects, documents and articles embedded in the building, from the offices to the hall, from the loggias to the projection room. The exhibited pieces and “remnants” of the archive do not create a whole story and they are not based on chronological order, but are incomplete and open to many interpretations. Rather, they constitute a cinematic and non-linear composition which highlights in fragments aspects of this complex history.
Kinofigurimi: An open archive will open on August 9, from 18:00 at Kino Lumbardhi and it remains open until September 27, 2021. It will be followed by events, a publication and conversations related to the research and the multilayered history of Lumbardhi Cinema.
Kinofiguration was developed in partnership with the ForumZFD office in Prishtina, and supported by the the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Raiffeisen Bank in Kosovo and the Kosovo Privatisation Agency.