OPEN CALL: Bauhaus of the Seas Sails Residencies in Portugal

Applications are now open for three multidisciplinary residencies as part of the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails project, in which the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, through the CAM–Centro Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, is a cultural partner. Each residency is integrated into one of the three pilot projects that are being developed in collaboration with Lisbon and Oeiras City Councils, as part of this European initiative.

We welcome applicants from international creatives, collectives, and researchers operating across various fields, including the visual arts, design, architecture, science, engineering, and food practices. We seek candidates passionate about contributing to a collective re-imagination and understanding of the climate crisis. Specifically, we invite proposals that embrace interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and interspecies perspectives, focusing on aquatic ecosystems. Research themes include ocean literacy, new materials, and regenerative food practices, with the aim of enacting meaningful change.

Each residency will receive a budget of 10,000 euros and will run for three months, culminating with public presentations in December 2024.

The Art & Design residency “Radical Waters–Concrete Matters”, part of the Blue Makerspace pilot project, encourages prototype research projects for the public space built from water-based materials. We are keen to shift the agenda from fixing to caring, growth to nurture, certainty to contingency. With a focus on the bioregion Mar da Palha (Tagus River), this residency seeks proposals that foster innovative and non-extractive approaches blurring the boundaries between marine resources and urban design while promoting ecological awareness and locally grounded creative solutions.

Application deadline: May 14, 2024

Additionally, candidates can also contribute to the development of a water-based materials library (derived from resources in the Tagus Estuary) that can be used in future projects.

The Art & Food residency “Eating Between Tides” grants support for collaborative art and food projects, encourages collaboration between visual artists, chefs, and young people. The aim is to develop a menu that includes ingredients from the Tagus Estuary, highlighting global food challenges and proposing innovative regenerative solutions to feeding in urban environments. This menu will be tested in local schools and artistic institutions in Lisbon.

Application deadline: May 14, 2024

The Art & Science residency “A Call to the Sea”, part of the Ocean Literacy pilot project, will take place in one of the oldest Aquariums in the World – the Vasco da Gama Aquarium. We seek collaborative art and science proposals that stimulate critical thinking around zoologic museum collections, encourage collaboration with non-human species, reweave multispecies histories, address more-than-anthropocentric problems, and bring forward new water narratives and intelligence beyond human perception.

Application deadline: May 13, 2024

The Bauhaus of the Seas Sails is a Lighthouse Demonstrator Project of the New European Bauhaus, with fundamental values of creativity, sustainability, and inclusion, locally grounded. Coordinated by Instituto Superior Técnico, this project involves a consortium of 18 academic, cultural, and local government in seven European cities (Genoa, Hamburg, Lisbon, Malmö, Oeiras, Rotterdam, and Venice). Funded by the Horizon Europe EU Programme, the initiative aims to stimulate an interdisciplinary and intergenerational approach to sustainability through various pilot projects. In Portugal, these include Ocean Literacy, Regenerative Menu, and Blue Makerspace which unfold through public programmes, residencies, and exhibitions across the cities of Lisbon and Oeiras.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, through CAM–Centro Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, is the cultural partner in Portugal for the implementation of these three pilot projects, developed in collaboration with the city councils of Lisbon and Oeiras.