Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City invites artists, architects, designers, directors, performers, fashion designers, writers or urban practitioners to apply for the Dekoloniale Berlin Residency 2023 AGITP[R]OP.
The term »Agitprop« emerged from the Russian Revolution about 100 years ago, linking the words agitation and propaganda to describe art practices that seek to instigate revolutionary social change and radically imagine different realities and possible futures. Agitprop aesthetics has had an immense impact on international modernist as well as contemporary cultural practices, particularly in visual arts, graphic design, and theater. One of Agitprop’s contemporary resonances is Street Art / Urban Art, whose development or even current trends have in turn been heavily influenced by Pop Art.
The theme of the collaborative exhibit 2023 »ZwischenWelten / BetweenWorlds« of the Dekoloniale exhibition team in collaboration with the district Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in the Villa Oppenheim will also inform and inspire the interventions of the Dekoloniale artist residencies 2023. The exhibition project will focus on anti-colonial networks in Berlin 1918 - 1933. Until the onset of National Socialist rule, significant migrant diasporic individuals and communities from the African, Asian, and Arab regions resided in Berlin. Coming from different colonial contexts, they became politically active and raised criticism of racist modes of representation, carried anti-colonial practices into the city, and from here made demands for national self-determination. Questions will also be asked about the feedback of these anti-colonial networks in decolonization and community-building processes after 1945.
The AGITP[R]OP! residencies 2023 will connect contemporary art devoted to social change with historic moments in political activism. The three selected residents are expected to co-create artistic interventions in the public sphere and present them in the framework of the Dekoloniale Festival and the Dekoloniale exhibit in September 2023. The residents are provided with travel costs, accommodation and a per diem in Berlin throughout the residency period, a production budget for the implementation of the project, and a fee. Applications can be submitted until 7 February. Find all Open Call criteria here.
