Residency

Residency at ZK/U

Global meets Local

ZK/U is a residency and platform for creative and urban experimentation.

Through its glocal program, ZK/U explores and critiques existing knowledge and practices in urban agglomerations as a springboard to individual and community self-empowerment. With insights and expertise gained over years of collective work as an artist-run initiative in Berlin and beyond, ZK/U fosters the expansion of resilient and inclusionary networks that can rise to the challenges of city life in the 21st century. In order to grasp the often perplexing complexities engendered by worldwide interconnections, local initiatives are examined on the global scale be it in Berlin or Buenos Aires.

International Residency Program

The residency program is open to artists, scholars and practitioners that concern themselves with the phenomenon of ‘the city’.

Residency fellows each organize their own time and work but also participate in our collaborative framework. They are invited to outline their project and practices for a select audience at ZK/U’s weekly dinner and/or during the monthly studio visits of professionals and associates from our international network (research scholars, curators, local historians, practicing artists, university lecturers, political activists, etc.). If they wish, fellows can also share their work with a broader audience during our bi-monthly open studio format, OPENHAUS, and/or by proposing their own public events and projects
 
ZK/U, for its part, promotes fellows’ work online and locally, primarily through the OPENHAUS event and with an individual website profile. The dedicated residency team is on hand to help fellows locate events, resources, and urban discourses relevant to their research interests, and to advise on the logistics of research and presentations. In offering useful tips and pointers, it also increases fellows’ appreciation and understanding of their new temporary home base, Berlin. 
 
Fellows are invited also to mingle at ZK/U’s public program of established events—the GÜTERMARKT flea market, or SPEISEKINO cinema-themed catering nights, for example — and to attend the various events, exhibitions, workshops, and conferences organized in the course of our local and international long-term projects with partner institutions.
 
Further, ZK/U is now encouraging residents to self-publish in order to complement its small but growing in-house archive and library. In leaving behind a record of their research methods, creative outcomes, and contacts and discoveries made in Berlin, past and present fellows continue to promote cooperation and exchange across borders, long after their residency has ended.

Local Resident Program

In den letzten Jahren hat das ZK/U Berlin sein internationales Residenzprogramm stetig mit Berliner Künstlern und Projekträumen verknüpft:

Mit der Ständige Vertretung! entstand für Berliner ein Arbeits- und Präsentationsraum. Mit den ZK/U Untersuchunggsausschüssen werden aktuelle Berliner Themen und relevante aktive Gruppen und Netzwerke in das ZK/U gebracht, die ein öffentliches Programm, künstlerische Arbeiten und Publikationen entwickeln, dieses wird mit den internationalen Residenten und der Öffentlichkeit geteilt.