150 Days of Akademie Schloss Solitude

Elke aus dem Moore took up the position of director at Akademie Schloss Solitude in May this year. After completing her first five months in the post, she describes her vision for the Akademie and outlines future changes.

Picturesquely situated on a hillside in a baroque castle commissioned by Charles Eugene, Duke of Wuerttemberg, as a summer residence, and surrounded by vast forests, Akademie Schloss Solitude offers its fellows ideal and productive working conditions. A kind of future lab in which the issues of tomorrow are developed from a range of artistic and scientific perspectives, it also acts as a beacon for the specific brand of international cultural policy espoused by the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Furthermore, its innovative approach serves as a role model for a host of other residency programs.

However, Solitude also offers surroundings conducive to rest and relaxation which attract countless visitors. Indeed, one of the Akademie’s future aims is to appeal to all interested citizens with its events and exhibitions, including day trippers, the surrounding communities and people whose passion for art and culture has, to date, remained undiscovered.

In the eyes of Elke aus dem Moore, the international and transdisciplinary artist-in-residence program holds immense potential and is a major resource for the region’s advancement. She notes: »This is a forum where diverse perspectives and approaches meet. Here, I consider it my responsibility to boost its accessibility to various audiences, recognizing and subsequently passing on possible potential for change«.

Initial changes are being implemented within the context of the current exhibition, entitled »Postcards of a Human Landscape«. Mediation efforts are being stepped up, and, once a month, a Sunday tour of the exhibitions followed by a film screening takes place.

In November, the Projektraum Römerstraße (Römerstraße Project Space), located to the south of Stuttgart, is due to reopen. Here, an increased number of exhibitions, workshops, concerts and readings aimed at the Stuttgart population are in the pipeline. In December, visitors are also warmly invited to attend the Akademie’s winter festival, entitled »Hot Punch in the Snow«, featuring »Open Studios« when the fellows open their studios to the public, offering insights into their working processes.

In future, exhibitions will receive a more intense thematic framework and curation, this as part of the Akademie’s reorientation. Likewise, the upcoming submission period, scheduled for January 2019, will specifically offer fellowships with a thematic focus. For Elke aus dem Moore, group-based, transdisciplinary research and work on a current, sociopolitical topic is a fundamental aspect of the Akademie’s new objectives: »I seek to establish Akademie Schloss Solitude as a place of collective imagination, a space which invites action and which inspires and galvanizes our fellows to initiate processes of social change, accompanying them on their individual journeys«. It is hoped that the change in perspective will trigger the use of alternative models of learning and knowledge, subsequently influencing society itself as a result of the Akademie’s increased mediation and educational formats.

Among other things, this includes the expansion of the virtual Akademie Schloss Solitude in terms of both structure and content, in order to widen its influential remit in the digital sphere, making the content of the Solitude network accessible online, and promoting new digital talent and experts via residency fellowships and on the Web. For this purpose, the Schlosspost online platform will be developed further as a magazine, alumni platform and a transdisciplinary and multi-perspective forum for artistic research and political discourse. The online funding program Web Residencies and the HASH Award for net-based projects in the field of art, technology and design will also be continued in collaboration with the ZKM | Karlsruhe (Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe). The Akademie seeks to use its digital program to make an active contribution to the current discourse on the digitalization of art, culture and society.

The adjudication process during the next call will also be subject to reform. In a collaborative process, a panel of experts will select the expert jurors for the individual fields, who will, in turn, determine Solitude’s next generation in a joint dialog with current fellows.

At present, Elke aus dem Moore is also working on an additional new concept for the Akademie’s alumni and network activities entitled the »Roaming Academy«. A cooperation with former fellows due to be launched in 2019, this project will organize and implement events in the fellows’ home countries, seeking to address artistic and sociopolitical issues and to support and promote the fellows outside the specific context of their fellowships.

The Akademie is concurrently expanding its existing exchange programs for young artists in Eastern Europe. Besides the established programs in Poland, Croatia, Serbia and Hungary, partner institutions from Romania and Bulgaria are due to be involved in the exchange process from 2019 onward.

For further information you will find an interview of Paula Kohlmann with Elke aus dem Moore on the online platform Schlosspost: https://schloss-post.com/opening-up-translating-unlearning/

Press photos for download can be found here.
 
Pressekontakt: 
Angela Butterstein 
Referentin für Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Tel +49 711 996 19 47 1
Mail: presse@akademie-solitude.de