Onassis AiR ~ Open Call 2019/20

ONASSIS AiR (Artists-in-Residence) is a year-round program, located in the urban centre of Athens, that grounds its mission in commitment to supporting artistic process, towards a less product-obsessed arts ecosystem.

The (inter)national artistic research and residency program in Athens (Greece) is being born in 2019 and is established by the Onassis Foundation.

What if we took the artistic practice, the craft, the process of creating, the process of research, each individual trajectory that artists, and other curious minds, go through day in and day out, as the starting point towards a less product obsessed arts policy? What if we refused the precarity of curators could take time to reconsider their practice without expectations and constraints of the production frenzy?

Onassis AiR, is a place where all the participants can interact with each other as peers. Regardless of age or how accomplished they are. To work and think and eat together as a community that does not strive for the next project, the next premiere, the next opening. A community that has the ability to pause, to rethink how each one of us functions and creates. A space that offers time. Time to learn, to change, or go deeper, by doing and undoing or non-doing.

Onassis AiR will support: Greek and international artists, curators, and thinkers working in time-based artistic disciplines, who wish to deepen, reconsider, or transform their practice or methodology.

Onassis AiR has been designed and will be run by Ash Bulayev (director of Onassis AiR) and Nefeli Myrodia (creative producer & dramaturg of Onassis AiR).

About the Onassis Foundation:
Committed to its mission of extending access to health, education and culture to as many people as possible, the Onassis Foundation supports education with over 7,000 scholarships covering study at the doctoral and postgraduate level in a wide range of fields both in Greece and internationally, investing in curious minds. At the same time, over 1,000 artists who are already releasing their potential enjoy the support of the Onassis Foundation in the form of scholarships. In addition, with over forty Onassis Stegi productions that tour abroad, it presents Greece at its best to the rest of the world. A restless Foundation that takes support for artists' needs to the next level is introducing a new programme: Onassis AiR (Artists-In-Residence).

Read more about each program strand:

•  Onassis AiR Critical Practices Program is a full-time, 3-month encounter of 5 practitioners living and working in Greece. The program is designed as a collective artistic research community of time-based professionals (visual artists, choreographers, theatre and film directors, composers, performers, curators, producers, designers, writers, cultural theorists, and other curious minds).

• Onassis AiR (inter)national Curator & Artist-in-Residence Program is a one-month, individual artistic research residency for international and Greek artists, living in Greece or abroad. This strand is for any artist or curator or other creative and curious practitioner (time-based practice) who has a concrete artistic research question or project they would like to take further. Regardless of experience level, but assuming that each participant has an existing individual practice at the time of the application.

• Onassis AiR Exchange Residencies are individual artistic research residencies, varying in duration and scope, taking place at one of our collaborating institutions, outside of Greece. Exchange Residencies are intended for artists living and working in Greece within time-based practices: artists, makers, designers, theorists, curators, and other curious minds who would benefit from participating in one of the collaborating programs around the world.

• Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowships are the most reactive and tailor-made strand of Onassis AiR program. Emergency Fellowships are intended for international and local artists, curators, and other practitioners. Emergency Fellowships are meant to be a stimulus to artists and curators who have a unique, unanticipated, and very time-sensitive need.

Onassis AiR DNA:

• Time-based
  This program is for artists and curators who work with time-based mediums.
•  In-flux
  This program is for artists and curators with an existing professional practice, who are going through a shift, who are in-flux, and those who look to redefine how they work or create.
• Local
  This program is very much rooted in the city of Athens and all the contradictions, beauty, tempo and light that it offers.
• (Inter)national
  This program is for artists and curators who live in Greece & international artists, regardless of their nationality.
• DIWO
  This program prefers to avoid the ethos of DIY (do-it-yourself) and instead embraces the logic of DIWO (do-it-with-others). All participants must have an interest of working and thinking and being with others (peers), and are willing to connect and engage socially within the diverse communities of Athens.
• Self-learning
  This program is not educational, but is based on the principles of self-learning and learning-by-doing.
• No gurus
  This program will not have teachers or master-classes or students - instead it is based on peers who all have their individual craft and methodologies and questions, and who share such concerns and questions with each other without unnecessary hierarchies inherent in the notion of “master artists”.
• Welcome back
  This program, and its different strands, is meant to be a place you can return to. If you have been part of one of the strands of ONASSIS AiR, you are always welcome to apply again for another strand, or simply come and talk to us about your needs. And as a past participant, you are always welcome to drop by for lunch, or to borrow equipment and use the spaces (if what you need is available during that moment), or ask for advice, or use the library.

                                                                                           Read more about Onassis AiR HERE!