Escapists and Jet-Setters:

Residencies and Sustainability

by Laura Kenins

c119 Autumn 2013

White Rabbit board member and artist

TomYoung, building a fire spectacle, 2012.
photo: hillary webb; image courtesy
ofwhite rabbit residency, upper
economy, ns

Artist residencies have become so commonplace

that we rarely think to question their origins or
their future. Subscribe to any art mailing list and
every week brings a new crop of application deadlines for residencies, festivals and various shortterm projects, in Japan, Brooklyn, Newfoundland, Berlin and Albertaseemingly indicating
a world of possibilitiesin spaces that range from
gleaming purpose-built artist colonies to one-off
projects to punk enterprises in backyards and sheds.
Some are urban, while others appeal to a desire to
get away from it all and work in beautiful natu
ral environments.

The underlying message in these calls for ap

plications appears to be that we need to get
out of our communities and countries to work,
that being an artist means being constantly
on the move. A recently established website
called Rate My Artist Residency presents an illusion of criticality, while encouraging resi
dencies to be thought of as a product by inviting readers to fill in multiple-choice questions with answers ranging from I had the time
of my life, everyone apply now! to Please,
give me my money and time back. And artists, many of whom worry about the environ
ment, oil dependency and consumerism, often
seem to have a blind spot for how these issues
play out in their own practices.
Sustainability is a fashionable word these
days. Many residencies already speak of their
interest in sustainability, which often translates to energy-efficient windows and low-flush
toilets being installed in studios and artist accommodations. But what if we think of sus
tainability in a wider sense? Not just residencies but numerous aspects of the art world
require travel for temporary events: festivals,
installations, symposia and other projects often act as, or incorporate, short-term residencies, with artists setting up for a period of time
in a place some distance from home, working
on, presenting, or installing a project. Are
these events sustainable for the planet, local
ecosystems, the local or wider community, or
artists own careers?
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We can trace artist residencies appeal back to

the 19th-century Romantic idea of heading into
natureits no surprise that some of the worlds
first artist colonies were founded in Caspar David Friedrich-era Germany, along with France
and the Netherlands, in the 1820s.1 In Canada,
a love of the landscape has had a hold on our
collective imagination since the Group of Seven,
and perhaps it is the same force that drives present-day artists to seek out residencies in places
like the Banff Centre, Fogo Island and Dawson
Citys Klondike Institute of Art and Culture.
The idea of the artist colony emerged in the
early 19th century alongside Romanticism, and
the idea of artists going into the wilderness or
to a place free from societal restraints persists
in todays residencies, whether they be urban
or rural. In those days, and up through the
early 20th century, artists often settled for
a period of years or decades.2 The notion of
the colony suggests Hakim Beys Temporary
Autonomous Zone, a space set apart from formal control and structure. These early artist
colonies were established as utopias of sorts,
aplace where experiencing natural beauty and
creating work could be artists primary concerns. In these spaces, artists could be free from
many of the usual restraints of everyday life and
everyday behaviour. Much like these colonies,
todays residency centre is a sort of permanent
temporary community where individual members may change, but one can always find a community of artists.
Residencies

...more, more, more

seems to be a dominant
philosophy and
greenwashing has
become more and
moreprevalent.

Marika Troili and David Larsson, The Taste of Nida

Art Colony, 2013, conceptual dinner, Nida Art Colony,
Nida, Lithuania, May 2013
photo: laura kenins

Many residencies and programs explicitly

terialised art practices that have virtually no
state their interest in the environment: the
environmental impact.4
2013 program of the Caetani Cultural Centre
The Fowkes are also interested in the matein Vernon, BC, sought artists working on
rial sense of sustainability in artworks themthemes of nature, conservation and social isselves, researching land art, performance, art
sues; the organization that runs Newfoundthat uses minimal materials or natural mate
rials, and work of an ephemeral nature. Ina
lands Fogo Island residency states an interest
in geotourisma type of tourism meant to remote area, an artist working with toxic mate
rials might damage the ecosystem, so some resustain a community, heritage and the environment. The Banff Centre follows national
mote residencies explicitly state concerns over
and international sustainability codes within
what materials artists use. Turning away from
its facilities and has run environmentally
a focus on production can eliminate most of
focused programs, including a 2011 program
these concerns. And similarly, ephemeral projon technology and recycling.
ects, providing due consideration for the enWhile many residencies may incorporate
vironment, provide another option for resiconcerns about environmental sustainability
dency and travelling artists to minimize the
into their mandates and programs, there are
impact of their practices.
other questions worth asking: where do artists
Polish curator Sebastian Cichocki has crecome from to attend residencies, and how do
ated another alternative to the productionthey get there? Residencies like Fogo Island
based residency, called The Site Residency,
are situated in remote, environmentally senwhich he runs on the Swedish island of Gotsitive areas and encourage artists to consider
land. He says that the frightening thing
this fact in their work; residencies can also be
about residency programs is that they are
found in many other isolated places around
based on a wrong belief that the artist is some
the world, like the half-dozen or so in rural
kind of elevated being. After spending some
Iceland. But rather than bringing in groups
time in a space, the artist absorbs the space
of artists to reflect on the landscape, wouldnt and can deliver an object.5 Inspired by the
the responsible choice be to limit access to as
site-specific works and institutional critiques
few people as possible?
of the 1960s and 1970s, The Site Residency
Budapest-based curators and art historians forbids its artists from making anything.
Maja and Reuben Fowkes have been research- Instead, they experience the site and later
ing and speaking on ecology and contempo- transmit their experience to a ghostwriter,
who produces a text about the residency. Cirary art for a decade. The Fowkes turn a rare
critical eye to the sustainability of the art
chockis anti-production residency works
worlds practices. In their text The Ecological as a critique of biennale art, where curators
Footprint of Contemporary Art, looking at
grab a big-name international artist and
festivals, conferences and biennales, they write: have them work for two weeks on a superfiThe international gatherings of the art world cial project. In contrast, at The Site Residenare resource intensive, relying on an invisible
cy, the artists only job is experiencing.
hinterland that stretches across the globe.3
Nova Scotias White Rabbit residency also
These events are usually short term and require aims to follow a model of minimal-impact
many people travelling by plane, both parti
production. Held each August since 2009
cipants and audiences, as well as the transport
ation of artworks, and the production of new
artworks. Residencies, although generally
longer in duration, have many of the same
transportation requirements.
The Fowkes writing asks questions that are
easy to ignore, like whether we really need another biennale or residency on a remote windswept island somewhere, or whether an artwork
about sustainability is itself sustainable. In a
greater sense, the Fowkes are looking at how
insidious the ideologies of our unsustainable
economic system have become in the art world,
where more, more, more seems to be a dominant philosophy and greenwashing has become more and more prevalent. Greenwashing
in the art world can take the form of boasting
of recycled-paper exhibition catalogues, water
conservation practices in a residency centre,
or the invitation of artists dealing withenvi
ronmental issues to join a program, but green
washing ignores the root questions of whether these things were necessary in the first
place, or how they were initiated. For instance,
was a large paper catalogue necessary? Should
the residency centre have been built in an environmentally sensitive area? Does the artist
need to travel for his or her work to convey a
message to the wider public? In a 2010 article,
the Fowkes mention a need to move away from
what they call a growth-programmed ideal
in the art world to the appreciation of demac119 Autumn 2013

10

in which the artist first toured and researched

tourists at a performance festival in Dubrovnik,
Croatia, and then prepared a guided tour of
guided tours in Stuttgart, Germany. Two
other London-based artists, Sam Skinner and
Markus Soukup, after being accepted to the
symposium, decided to critique artist tourism
by staying home and participating through
Skype, presenting a video postcard that
reflected on artist tourism. The most critical
thing Skinner and Soukup could do, they
thought, was to not travel. All travel has an
impact, they noted, and not just an environ
mental one. In their video, they reflected on
tourism, artist gentrification and the impact
artists and cultural producers have on a place.
Citing conflicts in Berlin between long-term
residents and the foreign artists who have
moved in, one of the artists recalled mixed
feelings about his role as a temporary resident
of Berlin in the past. Skinner and Soukup
asked whether artists can resist taking on the
role of tourist, and what possibilities there
are for artists work to travel without requiring travel by the artists themselves.
In their research on art and ecology, Maja
and Reuben Fowkes try to take into account
that there are possible benefits in the art worlds
resource-intensive activities, a view held by
Alberta artist Peter von Tiesenhausen (also a
past mentoring artist at the White Rabbit residency). Von Tiesenhausens work, primarily
in s culpture, installation and land art, usually dealswith environmental themes. Living
in ruralDemmitt, north of Grande Prairie,
AB, von Tiesenhausen travels frequently for
residencies, exhibitions and projects. Speaking
from Toronto, he comments, If I had to stay
at home and live in the forest like I do, I would
have no artistic practice.8
A networked art world necessarily requires
travel, especially for artists living outside major
centres. The possibilities and connections outweigh the impact: even if an artist is working
half-heartedly on a directionless series of oil
paintings at a residency, perhaps that residency will result in professional relationships or
creative revelations that surface years later.
Von Tiesenhausen points out how artists can
highlight environmental problems, noting
the resourcestravel, equipment and crew
that go into the production of one Edward

European programs
have given rise to a class
of residency artists:
people who may have
no permanent address,
but spend three months
here or two months
there at residencies
across the continent
orworld.

Bill Aitchison, The Tour of All Tours, 2013,

performance in Stuttgart, Germany.

on a farm in Upper Economy, NS, White

Rabbit brings together a group of artists who
often return each summer. The residencys
organizers encourage artists to work with the
natural materials on the property. According
to Andrew Maize, one of the organizers, the
rule is, if youre working with anything that
is not natural, not going to break down naturally, you have to take it with you when you
go. Though White Rabbit is increasingly
receiving national and international applications, the majority of its artists come from
Halifax or have some ties to Nova Scotia.
While materials are one concern, the im
pact of travelling on the artists themselves is
another consideration for the sustainability
of residencies. In the Europe of budget airlines, a Budapest artist can conceivably fly in
for a weekend in Warsaw, spend the next in
Spain, the following in Finland, and never
pay more than 60 for a ticket. European programs have given rise to a class of residency
artists: people who may have no permanent
address, but spend three months here or two
months there at residencies across the continent or world. Sociologist and writer Paula
Bialski calls these artists privileged nomads6
who highlight a sort of labour flexibility. Especially for young artists, it seems easier to
receive travel grant funding than production
grants, especially from the Canada Council
for the Arts. While this can be exciting at
first, it may not be sustainable in the long
term. Given the choice to receive funding
to work at home, in their own studios, many
artists might eventually choose this option
instead. The situation in Europe is similar
to the one in Canada, where international
projects sometimes seem to have boundless
funding but often exclude applicants from
thecountry where the program takes place.7
At the May 2013 edition of the annual Interformat Symposium of the Nida Art Colony
in Nida, Lithuania, artists, curators and cri
tics gathered to discuss the theme of critical
tourism. Nida, a tourist town on the Curon
ian Spit, a narrow sandbar in the Baltic Sea,
has been loved by artists and tourists for hund
reds of years. One question that continually
surfaced throughout the symposium was whether the artist is really more than a tourist during a residency. Ramunas Povilanskas, a professor from the nearby Klaipda University,
discussed the bubble of the colonys community and suggested ways to integrate that
bubble into the community of locals or tourists. While artists come to rural colonies for
their evocative backdrop, they seldom consider themselves tourists, despite being attracted to venues for similar reasons that tourists
are, and usually participating in some kind
of tourist-like activities (visits to local monuments, museums, and so on) at some point in
a residency.
Perhaps if artists were thought of as a sort
of tourist, it would open new possibilities for
considering the proliferation of artist residen
cies and travel-based projects. At the symposium, Bill Aitchison, a London-based artist,
discussed how it is impossible to really experience the point of view of a local during a
residency of a few weeks. Instead, Aitchison
proposed becoming an expert at being a tour
ist, leading to his project The Tour of All Tours

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Escapists and Jet-Setters...

Residencies

White Rabbit Residency, 2012.

photo: hillary webb; image courtesy of
white rabbit residency, upper economy, ns

c119 Autumn 2013

12

White Rabbit Residency artist Devin Krupnick, 2012.

photo: hillary webb; image courtesy
ofwhite rabbit residency, upper economy, ns

White Rabbit Residency, 2012.

photo: hillary webb; image c
ourtesy of
white rabbit residency, upper economy, ns

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Escapists and Jet-Setters...

Residencies

...If our main reasons

for travel for festivals or
residencies is to connect
with other artists or to
have time and space
away from our other
responsibilities, so we
can work, do we really
need to go to the other
side of the globe? Are
there not other artists
closer to home with
whom we can connect?

c119 Autumn 2013

Burtynsky image versus the impact Burtynskys work has on viewers awareness of environ
mental issues. Yes, there is guilt that goes with
[travel], he says, but there is also obligation.
In our correspondence, Maja and Reuben
Fowkes noted the importance of considering
community in weighing the benefits against
the negative effects of travel. On each occasion you have to decide whether the flight, or
the use of other carbon intensive resources,
can be justifiedon the other side of the equa
tion is the benefit that face-to-face communication can bring, which might be seen as an
important factor if we take into account the
dimension of social sustainability, in addition
to purely environmental considerations, they
write, commenting that fewer and longer resi
dencies would be more viable than residencyhopping.
Finnish artist Jussi Kivi also deals with environmental themes in his practice, working
with installation, mapping and photography
as the Romantic Geographic Society. As an
artist, Kivi avoids air travel and aims to primarily work regionally, completing recent projects in Estonia, Latvia and elsewhere in Finland. Kivi is especially concerned with the
lack of thought that artists show in relation
to the effects of travel while they take pride
in their environmental consciousness. He
writes: People take planes like they take
the bus this is really symbolic of modern
lifestyles, reflecting the idea that we can, and
should, be constantly on the move and be able
to reach the other side of the world in a matter
of hours whenever we feel the need.
Kivi also notes the irony of the same institutions that promote sustainability encouraging groups of visitors from around the world.
In Finland, both art institutions and the government are beginning to grow conscious of
the unsustainablein various sensesaspects
of the residency system. The Finnish minister of culture recently announced plans to
limit support for Finnish artists at residencies
abroad.9 Another remote residency Kivi is connected with, Mustarinda, towards the north
of Finlandinitially designed primarily for
the benefit of artists in Finlands major cities
concerns itself with environmental sustainability, and is beginning to consider where
artists travel from and how they get there in
their consideration for residencies.10
Doesnt it sound much better to say you
spent the last three months in a remote Ice
landic village, or rural Turkey, than in Mont
real or Winnipeg?11 This begs the question: if
our main reasons for travel to festivals or residencies are to connect with other artists or
to have time and space away from our other
responsibilities so we can work, do we really
need to go to the other side of the globe? Are
there not other artists closer to home with
whom we can connect?
Perhaps looking to the past can give us
some ideas of how to create a more sustainable residency system, when the complications
of long-distance travel forced people to stay
for longer periods or travel shorter distances.
We can learn from locally-focused, minimalimpact projects, such as White Rabbit, about
how to live where we do. We can use materials at hand, like at Mildreds Lane, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where artists come to

work together in the living museum of a

home, and residents consider alternate ways
of living in every part of their day, from their
art practices to making dinner.
And, finally, we can look at why arts fundingand prevailing attitudessuggest we
must go elsewhere to create or show our work,
wherever home is. If 19th-century artists held
a romantic view of the white male artist going
into the wild to paint and live the simple life,
todays evolution has the semi-nomadic jetsetting artist with a full passport or Air Miles
card flying off to live a simple life, where
someone else takes care of lifes boring details
outside the studiowhether this simple life
takes place in Berlin or rural Newfoundland
but just for a short time, before real life, or the
next glamorous destination, calls. By looking
deeper into how and why we travel for art and
travel to make art, we can work towards building a more sustainable system of residencies
and artist travel.
Laura Kenins is an artist and writer based in Riga,
Latvia. She has written about arts and culturefor
Canadian Art, Visual Arts News, Akimbo.ca,
ThisMagazine,TheCoast and others. Sherecently
completed her first artist residency inTartu,Estonia.

Endnotes
1 Nina Lbbren, Rural Artists Colonies in Europe,
18701910 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2001), 3.
2 Lbbren, Rural Artists Colonies in Europe, 4.
3 Maja and Reuben Fowkes, The Ecological
Footprint of Contemporary Art, Translocal.org,
www.translocal.org/footprint/index.htm.
4 Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Reclaim Happiness: Art
and Ecology Unbound, Artecontexto 27 (2010), 20.
5 Sebastian Cichocki, Nothing is old, neither nothing is new: A lecture on the site-as-an-exhibition
experience (lecture, Inter-format Symposium, Nida
Art Colony, Nida, Lithuania, May 18, 2013).
6 Paula Bialski, in Transient Spaces: The Tourist
Syndrome, ed. Marina Sorbello and AntjeWeitzel
(Berlin, 2010), 120.
7 This raises further questions: How much can one
contribute to a community in two months? When
we invest resources in sending artists elsewhere, what
is the community at home missing?
8 Peter von Tiesenhausen, interview with the author,
May 12, 2013.
9 Hanna Ojamo, Taiteilijaresidenssien lakkautta
minen huolestuttava signaali [Closing Down of
Artist Residencies is a Worrying Sign], Suomen
Taiteilijaseura [Artists' Association of Finland],
May 28, 2013, accessed June 2, 2013, www.artists.fi/
tietoa_toiminnasta/ajankohtaista/taiteilijaresidenssien_lakkauttaminen_huolestuttava_signaali.1251.
news.
10 Jussi Kivi, interview with the author, May 28, 2013.
11 The inverse is that sometimes, in far-flung areas,
there is an awkwardly colonial relationship by which
residencies court foreign artists under the guise of
enlightening the locals. Do the permanent residents
in these places really require an artist residentfrom
North America or Germany to educate them
aboutart?

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Escapists and Jetsetters...

Residencies