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‘I sing of the sea I am mermaid of the trees,’ Ayesha Hameed, 2021 (detail) courtesy the artist.
Co-led by Ayesha Hameed and Xenia Benivolski with guest faculty Kite and Jota Mombaça, this visual arts residency welcomes artists who are interested in exploring music, language and rhythm as they affect the geological, bio-political, and the mnemonic through media, performance, language, and writing.
In Wild Seed, Octavia E. Butler figured the crossing of the Atlantic in shapeshifting Anyanwu’s transformation into a dolphin, swimming with her kin along a slave ship. Fred Moten and Stefano Harney see ‘the weapon of theory’ as ‘a conference of birds’, while Deleuze and Guattari describe birds as artists, and birdsongs are expressions of territorial milieu. If territories listen to and speak back to their singing underwater and in the air, what misunderstandings, reverberations, feedback, and echoes are produced in the space between? How do we trace histories of slavery, colonialism, revolution, and resistance through sound, and their differential uses and abuses of the sonic? Revisiting music as a document of geological, political, biological, social and industrial change allows us to re-evaluate entangled technological relations between humans and nature, and to examine how music operates as a memory machine and centrifugal force that draws remembering bodies together.
This residency will examine artistic practices exploring melody, language, migration, acoustics, musicology, acoustemology, cross-species communication, soundscapes, the body, and sonar/radar activity as ways to evaluate histories of change, violence, membership and resistance in the world.
This program offers a structured space where visual artists come together to create work and discuss the pertinent theme. Through peer interaction, discussion groups, studio work, formal lectures, and studio visits from world-renowned visiting faculty, participants gain new ideas and insights that can be applied to creative exploration and professional development of their work.
Through historical and contemporary musical records, sonic practices, texts, sounds, fieldwork, songs and readings, participants will be guided through a series of workshops, lectures and events that create new space for social and artistic practices while making tangible connections between sonic and visual materials that coalesce historically.
This residency is for visual artists with an exhibition/publication record who have completed formal training in visual arts at the post-secondary level, or who have equivalent experience and recognition from their peers. Collaborative groups of no more than two are welcome to apply.
For full details on vaccination requirements, masking, safety protocols, and COVID related policies please visit: www.banffcentre.ca/covid-19-measures
This program is generously supported by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist program.
Ayesha Hameed (London, UK) explores the legacies of indentureship and slavery through the figures of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Her Afrofuturist approach combines performance, sound essays, videos, and lectures. Hameed examines the mnemonic power of these media – their capacity to transform the body into a body that remembers. The motifs of water, borders, and displacement, recurrent in her work, offer a reflection on migration stories and materialities, and, more broadly, on the relations between human beings and what they imagine as nature. Recent exhibitions include Liverpool Biennal (2021), Gothenburg Biennale (2019, 2021), Lubumbashi Biennale (2019) and Dakar Biennale (2018). She is co-editor of Futures and Fictions (Repeater 2017) and co-author of Visual Cultures as Time Travel (Sternberg/MIT 2021). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London and a Kone Foundation Research Fellow. |
Xenia Benivolski curates writes and lectures about sound, music and visual art. Her writing appears in art publications such as e-flux journal, Artforum, Art-Agenda, Infrasonica, and academic journals. In Toronto she was co-director and curator at SUGAR between 2017 and 2020 where she co-curated the exhibition Pickle Politics with Slavs and Tatars, and published the reader Shapeshift. She was also a founder of the collective-run 8eleven gallery, organizer of the critical forum Open Sesame and editor of the Rearviews publication series.
Currently she is working with the archive of Latvian outsider artist Zanis Waldheims and co- producing a first monograph for the artist in 2023. She is also curating You Can't Trust Music at e-flux.com, a research project connecting sound-based artists, musicians and writers to explore together the way that landscape, acoustics and musical thought contribute to the formation of social and political structures. Xenia collaborates with Second Spring, an experimental record label and contributes to the Worker as Futurist project at Lakehead University.
Jota Mombaça is an interdisciplinary artist whose work unfolds in a variety of mediums. The sonic and visual matter of words plays an important role in their practice, which often relates to anti-colonial critique and gender disobedience. Their work has been presented in several institutional frameworks, such as the 32nd and 34th São Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2020/2021), the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020), the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018) and the 46th Salon Nacional de Artistas in Colombia (2019). Currently, they have been interested in researching elemental forms of sensing, anti-colonial imagination and the relation between opacity and self-preservation in the experience of racialized trans artists in the Global Art World.
Your program fee includes a single bedroom on the Banff Centre campus for the duration of your program.
Get connected with other artists on campus and focus on your projects in a creative environment while we take care of the day-to-day essentials.
Using a credit-based system to dine on campus, our flexible meal plans allow you to select meals according to your own needs during your stay. Banff Centre can respond to most dietary requests.
The Full Flex meal plan is equivalent to $58 credit per day, equivalent to breakfast, lunch and dinner at our Buffet service.
Create in one of our specialized studios and utilize shared production facilities in printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, photography, digital media and more (subject to additional fees) Collaborative groups share studio space.
This program offers opportunities to showcase your work.
Your program fee includes free access to the swimming pool, climbing gym and fitness suite as well as discounted rates for classes at the Sally Borden Fitness and Recreation Centre.
Enrich your experience and get to know other artists on campus by taking advantage of the activities and support provided by our Participant Resources team.
A series of outstanding guest artists and curators will give free public talks and hold informal discussions.
Limited access to the Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives.
Although the doors remain temporarily closed, you can still access a wide range of books, periodicals, recordings and scores through our digital databases available on the digital resources page, and physical items through our curbside pick-up service.
*Application fee: $65 ($35 for applicants who identify as Indigenous).
*Financial Aid of 100% is available to cover tuition, and 50% is available to offset food and accommodation costs.
All accepted participants will receive the above financial aid package.
* Application fees are not refundable.
Banff Centre will issue official tax receipts for eligible tuition fees and financial assistance and awards as required by the Income Tax Act. You will receive a T2202 (Tuition and Enrolment Certificate) for eligible tuition fees paid and a T4A (Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income) for applicable financial assistance and awards.
Help fund your experience at Banff Centre. View a compiled list of national and international opportunities here.
Learn more about the steps to Complete Your Application.
A one-page cover letter explaining why you are interested in this program and what you hope to achieve by attending it.
A one-page resume or C.V. describing academic, professional, and other relevant experience.
In 500 words, describe the framework of your proposed project in relation to the residency theme, your weekly execution plan, details of the mediums you propose to use and your level of knowledge in the processes required, and outline any specific technical or support requirements.
Outline all studio, equipment, software, facility, or staff support requested in our upload tool. Final resource allocation is at the discretion of the department.
Artists must submit 10 samples of work. File sizes and specifications are available in our upload tool.
Participants are selected by impartial adjudication on the basis of their submitted material. In addition to artistic merit, consideration will be given to the likelihood that the artist's work will benefit from the program.
Please note, application fees are non-refundable and go towards supporting the review of each program application and the adjudication process. All submitted applications are reviewed by a panel of adjudicators, and due to the competitive nature of Banff Centre’s programs, we do not provide feedback on applications or guarantee acceptances into programs. All applicants will be notified of their application status via email following adjudication.
All programs, faculty, dates, fees, and offers of financial assistance are subject to change. Program fee is subject to applicable taxes. Non-refundable fees and deposits will be retained upon cancellation. Any other fees are refunded at the discretion of the Banff Centre. The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.
For questions on preparing your application, please contact Admissions:
