Palimpsest Open Call for Creative Dialogues - apply before 18 September 2023, 12 PM CEST
PALIMPSEST project, which is coordinated by Politecnico di Milano and where IFLA EUROPE participates as a partner, has just launched the CREATIVE DIALOGUES Open Call.
Palimpsest Project - Creative Drivers for sustainable living heritage landscapes - focuses on regenerating the lost sustainability wisdom in heritage landscapes through co-creation with creative actors, technical stakeholders and civic society. Architecture, landscape architecture, design and art practices dialogue with place-specific needs and broad systemic challenges to imagine new scenarios and experiment with innovative practices connecting human actions, landscape heritage and sustainability objectives. To experiment and envision novel landscape scenarios, PALIMPEST focuses on three pilot landscapes with diverse cultural identities and environmental problems.
The project is seeking creative minds, artists, designers, landscape architects and architects from all over Europe, eager to work on imagining and experimenting with new ways to respond to environmental problems in three exemplary landscape laboratories, Łódź in Poland, Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, and Milan in Italy.
PALIMPSEST is a EU-funded research initiative, working towards re-shaping landscapes through the co-creation of sustainable solutions that connect human actions, heritage, and sustainability, hybridizing local practices with architecture, design, and art.
About the Project: The word PALIMPSEST origins from the Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος (‘again’ + ‘scrape’) and describes the process of writing over papyrus: existing text was scraped and washed off, the surface re-smoothed, and the new literary material written on the saved material. PALIMPSEST adopts this re-writing perspective to look at how resilient landscapes are constantly reshaped by natural processes and sustainable human practices (rooted ways of doing things). The disequilibrium within human-nature interactions, particularly affecting climate and sustainability transition challenges presents an urgent call for action.
In the context of resilient landscapes, PAlIMPSEST considers strategic working together with creative agents, as they can design and support action on at least three key levels:
• Bearing witness and sharing knowledge: making visible the hidden pollution, the degradation and even destruction of ecosystems and their consequences for people, living things and landscapes, as well as the life-saving actions and solutions to deal with them;
• Political and symbolic action: deprogramming the imaginary by writing new utopian and dystopian narratives, but also by decolonising systems of representation;
• The resilient act: taking direct action on ecosystems and the ecological footprint by economising on resources, reusing forgotten skills, using materials with a low environmental impact, inventing new materials and restoring natural environments;
PALIMPSEST will experiment with creative agents in three pilot landscapes:
1.Łódź (Poland), UNESCO city of films with a unique industrial heritage, fighting against multiple pollution problems (water, air and soils) while regenerating industrial urban landscape to give birth to a new urban;
2. Jerez de la Frontera (Spain), an Andalusian wine cultural landscape challenged by the competition for land use between agriculture, tourism and energy production;
3. Milan (Italy), focusing on the landscape around the river Lambro shaped by ancient irrigation practices having access to a plurality of waters and nowadays struggling with water scarcity issues, never experienced before;
In each landscape, PALIMPSEST will promote collaborative experiments grounded on design, art practices, and architecture respectively playing the role of value-generative agents, alternative futures envisioners, as well as engaging drivers. The selected applicants will participate in the design, organization and development of two residential workshops in one of the 3 pilot landscapes.
On these occasions, design, art practices and architecture will dialogue with place-specific needs and broad systemic challenges to imagine new scenarios and experiment with new practices connecting human actions, landscape heritage, and sustainability objectives.
PARTICIPATION
Interested artists, designers, architects and landscape architects can submit an application at this LINK
SCHEDULE
Team and individual application: deadline September 18th, 12pm (CEST)
Shortlisted teams’ selection: by October 13th (max.4 finalists per pilot, 12 candidates in total)
Creative Dialogues: 2 sessions between the end of October and December 2023 (online)
Final submission: January 15th, 2024
Welcome Event February 2024 (online)
Residential workshops 1st cycle: spring - summer 2024
Residential workshops 2nd cycle: spring - summer 2025
AWARD AND RESIDENCY
A fee of 10,000 euros is paid to each selected applicant (team or individual).The fee will be paid in installments of 5,000 euros (all tax included) per week of residency and follow-up prototyping work.
The fee is meant to:
• enable him/her to carry out his/her creation, research, or experimentation activity outside his/her usual creation place, in accordance with the primary vocation of the residency;
• participate in the online periodic meetings that will follow the residency to design the prototyping and other follow up activities;
An additional budget will be allocated to each pilot landscape to further develop and prototype the ideas developed during the residential workshops and follow-up activities as outputs of the collaboration between all involved parties.
Please find below the invitation to the Open Call. The application form can be found here.
Full Call is available on https://www.palimpsest-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/PALIMPSEST_OPEN-CALL-Announcement-Final.pdf
For more information: please contact info@palimpsest-project.eu
