residency
Elsewhere residencies invite creatives of all kinds to experiment with context, process, and collaboration within a three-story former thrift store turned living museum. Residents endlessly compose and re-imagine Elsewhere’s environment—the first floor thrift store (two storefronts), second floor boarding house, and third floor warehouse—through creative and critical projects that respond to layers of objects, artworks, collections, architectures, histories, sites, concepts and collectivities. Residents use the immense at-hand resources from the 58-year inventory as both material and inspiration for site-specific investigations that transform and build upon past projects and/or chart new trajectories for the collaborative. Residents enter into an evolving collaborative artwork, inhabit production spaces, and establish living sites throughout the museum, discovering the aesthetic, performative, and social qualities of everyday objects and the intervention of things within an extraordinary, immersive experiment in living, working, and playing.
resources
Residency participants have access to a vast collection of cultural surplus, three-floors of varied architectures in which to curate new works, and a community of collaborators participating in production. Elsewhere provides access to basic production equipment, including digital audio-video equipment, wood working machines, and opening in 2010, a fabric workshop. Throughout the residency, Elsewhere encourages creators to expand their body of work on an unprecedented scope and scale and/or activate ideas in an alternative social, material, and conceptual context. Residents have opportunities to present their work in interactive formats to museum visitors and Elsewhere’s collaborative community, as well through public events and projects for our growing downtown neighborhood. We collaborate with creators to document production phases, capture related performances, and host events, and we help promote works and critical responses in the press, print and online media formats. Each resident joins a network of hundreds of creatives who share the experience of the program, many of whom continue with the collaborative through a variety of on and off-site projects well past the residency.
collaborators
Elsewhere residencies are facilitated by a community of artists, producers, and organizers that explore a culture of evolving ideas in action. For us, collaboration is an encounter with intersecting visions layered over time. Collaboration is derived from conscious action and demonstrating care for others, objects, and environments. Collaborations at Elsewhere happen in responsive individual and group formations. As Elsewhere is founded on the idea of reciprocal relationships, those who seek out collaborators for projects will find opportunities for exciting exchanges, but each individual is ultimately responsible for producing their own work and realizing ideas within their own production capacity. Residents flourish when they approach our community with initiative, independence, and inquiry. Each resident—through their work, approach, expressions, and considerations—contributes to the ongoing curation of the Elsewhere experience.
logistics
Elsewhere residencies last from two to six weeks at any time during our season that runs from mid-March to early November. Visiting residents share two converted rooms in the second floor former boarding house. These rustic rooms simultaneously function as museum exhibits, as does our kitchen, bathroom, and other facilities. Each resident pays a $250 flat fee ($50 deposit, $200 program fee upon arrival), funds their own travel, and participates in Elsewhere’s food co-operative at the cost of $35 per week. Funded residencies are currently available through a small number of education fellowships and curated residency events. We host no more than six residents at any given time. Collaborative groups are invited to apply; each collaborator must complete a separate application. We accept applications from creatives across media and background, and review applicants based on an advanced body of work, an articulated practice and process, and a commitment to exchanging and collaborating regarding investigations. We review applications every other month, and will respond to you within two weeks to let you know if you’ve advanced to the interview process, and one month to let you know if you’ve been accepted to the program.