Black Hole residency

Seven international artists participated in the Black Hole experimental collaborations residency as part of the Creative Europe project Artist-Run Network Europe. The residency took place at Totaldobže Art Centre, where the artists explored collaboration and sharing through play, board games, colour-hunting, silent awareness walks, and dancing around bonfires as art practice. They have also been challenging their habitual individual practice, while exploring collective art making process, which demands certain compromises, and finding new ways to manifest ideas.

Residency materials and outcomes were presented as a party of objects, installations, performances, films, and photo images.

Participants: Aina Bikše (LV), Kristjan Thorlacius Finsson (IS), Stuart Mayes (UK/SE), Sorcha McNamara (IE), Felipe Andres Naranjo Urenda (CL/DE), Matthias Roth (DE), Lidija Zaneripa (LV).

Moderators: Kaspars Lielgalvis (LV), Laura Prikule (LV).
Workshop leaders: John Fail (US), John Grzinich (US), Andreas Ribbung (SE).
Produced by: Totaldobže Art Centre.

The Black Hole residency is a part of the Creative Europe Small Cooperations Project, Artist-Run Network Europe (ARNE). The Black Hole residency is co-funded by the Latvian Ministry of Culture. Stuart’s participation was made possible with Enköping Council’s Cultural Support fund.

About Totaldobže

Totaldobže Art Centre is a platform for contemporary art creation established in 2008 in Latvia. Totaldobže invites people from various fields to collaborate, connect and communicate human values through art. Residencies, workshops, lectures and discussions are organised in an unused cinema and various rooms in the former Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Transport and Aeronautics at Riga Technical University, as well as in other locations around the city provided by the organisation Free Riga. Totaldobže organises the Black Holes workshops – process-driven collaborations that facilitate artists from various disciplines with a focused residency period within which they engage in an intensive creative exchange supported by a moderator. Black Holes is about experimenting, taking risks, and allowing for failure.

About Artist-Run Network Europe

Artist-Run Network Europe (ARNE) is a European project with focus on artist-run initiatives co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Over the course of two and a half years (October 2020–April 2023), the project will host a range of activities, including exhibitions, conferences, workshops and lectures. ARNE aims to strengthen the self-organised artist-run sector in Europe with focus on local and international cooperation, and to create a simple information framework for art professionals and art students, namely through a collaborative online platform, Artist-Run Resource Centre (ARRC).

Adapted from an original text by Ormston House, Limerick Ireland.

Image: Stuart Mayes, site specific installation with found object and snow, lakeside location, 2022