The 2024 Rabbit Island Residency Program is now accepting applications. This year we anticipate awarding three residencies that will take place between June and September. With the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and continued contributions from donors we are excited to support awarded residencies with the following:

  • $3,300 (USD) unrestricted honorarium
  • 3 week residency on Rabbit Island
  • Exhibition in the annual Rabbit Island publication and online archive
  • Connections to partner institutions for exhibition and performance opportunities
  • Mainland housing as needed in the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan

A comprehensive Application Guide, Frequently Asked Questions, and application form are available at the Artist Residency page.

We look forward to your submissions!

Congratulations 2023 Residents

We are excited to announce awarded residencies for the Rabbit Island 2023 Residency program. Three residencies have been awarded featuring a total of six artists. Each residency is supported by an unrestricted honoraria of $3,000 USD made possible by grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The awarded residents are:

Alchemyverse (Yixuan Shao, Bicheng Liang, and Ziqi Xu)
Victoria Manganiello
Distant Realities (Marine Lemarié and Nicolas Stephan)

Below are short biographies and artist statements of each awarded resident, in addition to their proposals. While we acknowledge that each resident's ideas may evolve while living and working on the island, we share these in the spirit of curiosity, transparency, and to provide insight into the quality, critical nature, and ambition of the proposals we receive. We look forward to sharing the residents' research and work as we move forward through this program season, and beyond.

Since 2011 the program has supported 39 awarded residents and hosted over 80 collaborators. The experiences have resulted in artwork, writing, compositions, performances, and more that critically engage issues of conservation, culture, and how we interact with—and advocate for—natural spaces. As society continues to face these contemporary challenges we are excited to have Rabbit Island’s residents contribute to this ongoing dialogue.

The committee extends a sincere thank you to all who applied to the Rabbit Island 2023 Residency program. While we regret not being able to offer more residency positions, it is an honor to be working with the following artists.

Rabbit Island 2023 Residency Selection Committee
Duy Hoàng, 2018 Resident
Christie Neptune, Artist
Aly Ogasian, 2021–22 Resident
Jessica Segall, Artist
Jessica Shaefer, Curator
Rob Gorski, Cofounder/President
Andrew Ranville, Cofounder/Director

Alchemyverse (Yixuan Shao, Bicheng Liang, and Ziqi Xu)

Biographies
Based in New York, Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao have been collaborating as a transdisciplinary duo, Alchemyverse, since 2020. Combining craft and research through their respective backgrounds in visual arts and sound studies, the duo’s field-based practice has taken them to places such as Oahu and Moa Kea, Hawaii, the American Southwest, the Hudson Highlands, and the Atacama desert. Alchemyverse has exhibited at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art (NY), School of Visual Arts (NY), Wallach Art Gallery (NY), Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center (CT), LeRoy Neiman Gallery (NY), and the Bishop Museum (HI). Their artist research was presented at the IRCAM forum at New York University. Currently, they are an artist-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York.

Ziqi Xu is a paleontologist and theatre designer from Shenzhen, China, currently based in Johnson City, Tennessee. She holds bachelor's degrees in geology and theatre design from the University of Washington and is now pursuing her passion for paleontology at East Tennessee State University. Xu has designed lighting for a diverse range of theatrical works, including traditional Shakespearean plays, modern Chinese comedy, and an improv show adapted from children's television classics. She has also gained field experience in Montana for her geological and paleontological studies. Currently, Xu's research focuses on understanding the rodent community in the Appalachian region about 5 million years ago.

Artist Statement
Our collaboration combines our respective backgrounds in visual art, sound studies, geology and paleontology and investigates the ways in which art and science communicate. We are fascinated by the challenge of locating ourselves within the vastness of geologic time and the ways in which our human experiences are intertwined with the earth's cycles of growth and decay. Reflecting on environmental issues and human dislocation of space, we build sensory channels between the personal, the human, and the metaphorical with the othered, the terrestrial, and the scientific.

Our process begins as an intimate and private journey and evolves into a more holistic approach incorporating scientific research and crafting in situ. Using electricity, magnetism, and sound to activate images, forms, and found objects, we create visual and aural assemblages using materials both foraged from nature and from our daily surroundings. By working in situ in places undergoing transformative yet under-recognized forces, our collaboration proposes an alternative mode of relations, one that does not consider Landscape as a static subject but as an active agent representing the constant flux between human and natural histories.

Proposal
As a team of artists and researchers from diverse backgrounds, we would like to explore the question of how time on Rabbit Island moves on a different scale from the one we experience in our daily lives. We are drawn to the ways in which geologic traces are preserved and changed by the island's ecosystem. By studying, documenting, and recording the biota of Rabbit Island as well as our interactions with it, we hope to uncover memories of non-anthropocentric records of time.

We view geology as a subject that studies both relics and contemporary material evidence to speculate and construct narratives about the history of our surroundings. By approaching Rabbit Island as a parallel universe, an alternative shelter that enables us to view our world from a different perspective, we hope to gain a new understanding of our place within the earth’s cycle. Through activities such as sound recording, 3D scanning and photogrammetry, drawing, and documenting our encounters and studies of the island's geology and ecology — from the Jacobsville sandstone to the red-back vole — we will be working to gain insights into our role as artists, humans, and coexisting entities in relation to the island.

Our interdisciplinary approach, combining visual art, sound studies, and scientific research, offers a unique perspective on the natural world. Through our activities on Rabbit Island, we aim to provide a window through which we can understand where humanity stands in the vastness of the time of the earth.

Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Ladina Bischof, TaDA
Photo: Paul Takeuch

Victoria Manganiello

Biography
Victoria Manganiello is an artist, designer, organizer, and educator. Her work has been included in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Boulin ArtInfo, Forbes, and Architectural Digest, among others. Victoria has received multiple international, recognized grants, awards, commissions, and residency appointments including from Wave Farm, S&R Foundation, Forbes, Center for Craft, The Wallstreet Journal, and TaDa. She has exhibited her work internationally including across Europe, Taiwan, Australia, and throughout the USA including at the Tang Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Ars Electronica, BOZAR, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Queens Museum. She is also a part-time associate professor at NYU and the New School and co-organizes an annual artist residency for e-textile practitioners. Victoria is well-known in the textile community as an accomplished artist and innovative storyteller and facilitates many socially engaged projects in collaboration with other artists, designers and educators.

Artist Statement
The structures I compose are studies of materials and our fundamental relationship to them. I use traditional textile-based media: I spin my own yarn, mix my own color dyes, and weave my own constructions. I integrate historical methods of color dye and yarn and textile construction alongside surprising technologies and modern alternatives like computer code and fiber reactive pigments. My recent projects incorporate materials from the seemingly extreme natural to the extreme synthetic and I make choices with density, color, and kinetics to demonstrate materiality and the depth of possibility in the natural world. I use abstraction which I derive from world geography and statistical mapping and my work takes the form of sculptural installation, wall hanging, performance, and socially engaged work. I am interested in using weaving as code and language and my work seeks to connect common materials like textiles to common behaviors like communication. Conceptually, my work is rooted in the history of technology and its connection to gender, food, and craft. I use the stories of the past with the mood of the present to create experiential artworks that speculate on the future.

Proposal
"Natural Synthetics" is an ongoing series of explorations taking the form of studies, woven paintings and immersive experiences which examine how our relationship with consumable materials mirrors social dynamics and current politics. Through both literal and figurative interpretations, I seek to (re)define what is considered "natural" or "synthetic" using a range of materials from analog to futuristic, digital, modern, and even intangible. During my time on the island, I will focus on material experiments and social research/reading within the structure and history of natural bath and vat dye. This dedicated time will allow me to deepen my understanding of pigment methodologies and explore its nuances and delicate procedures, especially in comparison to synthetic pigments and fibers. I intend to create a sample/guide book that responds to the local landscape to be shared with the community and future guests.

Photo: Selina Wach
Credits: Distant Realities with Boram Koh, Iván Simó Sánchez, Johannes Schlusche, Joaquin Lozano Suarez, and Medialab Matadero Madrid.
Credits: Distant Realities with Boram Koh, Iván Simó Sánchez, Johannes Schlusche, Joaquin Lozano Suarez, and Medialab Matadero Madrid.
Credit: Distant Realities

Distant Realities (Marine Lemarié and Nicolas Stephan)

Biography
Distant Realities is a Berlin-based geospatial design studio founded by Marine Lemarié and Nicolas Stephan. We create narratives based on existing planetary conditions in which unseen realities become visible in interactive maps and animated short films. Currently, we are working on a carbon accounting platform that aims to aid governments and communities in spatial decision-making related to natural carbon sinks and ecosystems and a short film playing in a fictional carbon capture and storage facility. Marine and Nicolas have participated in residencies and research programs at Medialab Matadero Madrid, SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, and The Terraforming at the Strelka Institute in Moscow. Distant Realities has exhibited in Austria, Los Angeles, and Barcelona and presented their work at architecture faculties worldwide, such as the University of Innsbruck, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, CAUP Tongji, VA[A]DS Tbilisi, and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Artist Statement
Distant Realities uses research-based speculative design to address global and local crises related to ecology, politics, and technology. Their work encompasses various mediums, including video installations, theoretical research, and interactive platforms, and draws upon their background in urban theory, architecture, and speculative design.

Distant Realities understands design and architecture as a medium to unveil hidden realities and possible futures in an entangled world governed by intricate systems of rules and obligations. We do not consider our projects proposals, but scenarios, incorporating elements of the utopian as well as the dystopian. We merge the latest digital techniques with conceptual thoughts to create narratives in which unseen realities transform into visible ones.

We explore existing realities. We imagine future ones.

Proposal
The project reflects on Rabbit Island’s ecosystem by creating an interactive map. It aims to visualize the relationship between the island's plants, animals, soil, temperature, humidity, and other ecological factors and to simulate changes in these relationships caused by climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances. Due to its small surface area and naturally isolated territory, Rabbit Island provides a unique opportunity to do so, enabling the collection of data on the ground, which will be combined with satellite images to provide a comprehensive view of the ecosystem. The anticipated outcome is an interactive “fuzzy” map of the island consisting of several visual layers and simulations of possible future developments. The map is based on a geographic grid system developed by a major tech company and critically reflects on its own technology to address the abstraction of landscapes in the past and today. Utilizing a varied approach that incorporates not only a map, but also diagrams, imagery, written explanations, and on-site video recordings, we strive to comprehend the intricate interconnections that comprise the ecosystem of Rabbit Island, as well as its broader historical and geographical significance both within and beyond its immediate surroundings.

We are getting closer to our 2023 Residency season. Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in the Rabbit Island Residency program, and to applicants who took the time submitting work samples, artist statements, and crafting proposals. This year we received 310 applications from 24 countries from around the world. Over the past three weeks the Selection Committee has diligently reviewed every application. After multiple shortlisting stages and meetings narrowing down the applications, the committee has reached the final stage of review and deliberation. Notifications have been sent to all applicants. Finalists will be interviewed over the next week and awarded residencies will be announced in early May.

About the Selection Process

Following the application deadline all 310 applications were compiled into a review document for the seven member Selection Committee. All members were invited to review, make notes, and provide feedback as the first stage of the review process began. From April 2 – 13, 2023, four members of the Selection Committee reviewed all 310 applications in detail. Together they read each artist statement and proposal; reviewed the work samples; and visited the links provided in each submission. During the first videoconference, each of the four committee members guided a group discussion covering a quarter of the applications that they took the lead in reviewing during the first stage. At the end of this first review, an initial shortlist was created featuring 65 applications.

These 65 applications were compiled into a new document for the entire Selection Committee to review. From April 15 – 22, 2023, members of the committee independently reviewed the initial shortlist and selected the 10 applications they felt were the strongest, with the opportunity to add any application from the total pool of 310 that they thought needed a closer look. This process resulted in a second shortlist of 42 exemplary applications. On April 22, the seven member Selection Committee met via videoconference and deliberated for five hours to reach a finalist list of 8 applications. Finalists will be interviewed by the end of April. After the interview process, Selection Committee consensus and/or voting will result in three successful applications being awarded a Rabbit Island Residency for the 2023 program. The awarded residencies will be announced in early May.

We are now accepting applications to the 2023 Rabbit Island Residency Program. This year we anticipate awarding three residencies that will take place between June and September. With the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and continued contributions from donors we are excited to offer successful applicants the following:

  • $3,000 (USD) unrestricted honorarium
  • 3 week residency on Rabbit Island
  • Exhibition in the annual Rabbit Island publication and online archive
  • Connections to partner institutions for exhibition and performance opportunities 
  • Mainland housing as needed

Further award details, requirements, and a comprehensive Application Guide, are available on the Artist Residency page at the link below.

The deadline for application is March 31, 2023, at 11:59pm EST.

APPLY

We look forward to welcoming a new group of resident artists to the island this coming summer for the 2023 Residency Program. Details for the open call will be released soon. Make sure to check the Artist Residency page to sign up for the mailing list.

ANCHORAGE, a Rabbit Island world premiere.

Join us Saturday, November 13, 2021, at 7:30 pm Eastern for the premiere of a newly commissioned collaborative work by choreographer Yoshito Sakuraba and composer Na’ama Zisser. Event tickets and livestream information is available at https://events.mtu.edu/event/anchorage_world_premiere

Presented in collaboration with the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, this premiere marks the inaugural performance from our Choreography and Composer Residency program. Na’ama and Yoshito spent two weeks on the island in 2019 followed by a week on the mainland at the Rozsa Center.

The concept-responsive residency asks composers and choreographers to consider the current canon of dance and composition in the context of contemporary ecological thought. Its intent is to encourage bold creative experiments that meaningfully engage human relationships to the natural world, in a way that these mediums have not done so historically. As the understanding of ethics within the Anthropocene evolve, so too must our cultural works that are created within it.

Congratulations 2021 Residents

We are excited to announce awarded residencies for the Rabbit Island 2021 Residency program. Four residencies have been awarded featuring a total of six artists. Each will live and work on Rabbit Island this summer pursuing research and work that aims to interrogate and expand the dialogue between culture and conservation. Each residency is supported by an unrestricted honoraria of $3,200 USD made possible by grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The awarded residents are:

Laura Moriarty
Aly Ogasian & Claudia O’Steen
Avery Williamson
Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola & Roosmarijn Pallandt

Along with the brief biographies and artist statements below, we are sharing the awarded proposals in full. We do so in the interest of transparency, archival intention, and to provide insight into the quality, critical nature, and ambition of the proposals we receive. However, the residency program acknowledges these proposals often transform in response to the residency. We look forward to sharing the residents’ works and experiences as they evolve, and are influenced by their time on the island and period of reflection after.

Since 2011 the Rabbit Island Residency program open calls have received over 2,100 applications. Since that time the program has supported 34 awarded residents and hosted over 80 collaborators. The experiences have resulted in artwork, writing, compositions, performances, and more that critically engage issues of conservation and natural spaces. As society continues to face these contemporary challenges we are excited to have Rabbit Island’s residents contribute to this ongoing dialogue.

The committee extends a sincere thank you to all the applicants. This year’s selection was the most difficult to date, given the unprecedented number of thoughtful proposals supported by exemplary work. While we regret not being able to offer more residency positions, it is an honor to be working with the following artists over the next year.

Read the complete details of the selection process

Rabbit Island 2021 Residency Selection Committee
Alice Pedroletti, 2018 resident
Duy Hoàng, 2018 resident
Luce Choules, 2016 resident
Patricia Buffa, Director of Digital Strategy for Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Rob Gorski, President of the Rabbit Island Foundation

Rabbit Island 2021 Residency Selection Coordinator
Andrew Ranville, Director of the Rabbit Island Foundation

 

Laura Moriarty

Biography
Laura Moriarty is an artist from and currently located in New York’s Hudson River Valley. She makes process-driven works with pigmented beeswax whose forms, colors, textures and patterns result from processes similar to those that shape and reshape the earth. Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2021, her solo exhibition, Resurfacing, was featured at the Hunterdon Art Museum in New Jersey.

Artist Statement
Taking poetic license with geology, I compare the processes of the studio with processes of the earth, creating sculptural paintings and related works on paper that recall natural formations. Layers of color form the strata of a methodology in which the immediacy of the hand can translate a sense of deep time. Working and reworking molten, richly pigmented beeswax, I build each piece through a slow, simple yet strenuous physical engagement, which often becomes a metaphor for the ephemerality of life and civilization. As if dug from the center of the earth, my pieces often resemble scientific models or artifacts whose strata and embedded fragments reveal a history, just as the layers of the earth itself tell a story of climate shifts, planetary events and cataclysmic disruptions. In my work, each layer resurfaces the one below, creating successive tiers that vary in thickness and color, marking new eras, delineating ages, and trapping stories that are part of the time/space continuum.

Proposal
My vision for the Rabbit Island Residency is to commune with nature in monastic solitude for three weeks. My daily practice will include exploring, collecting, and studying the rocks and minerals of the island, which will culminate in the creation of a series of nature dioramas.

Historically, the diorama is a model representing a scene with three-dimensional figures, either in miniature or as large-scale displays. In my Rabbit Island dioramas, rocks and stones will take the place of human figures - not as stand-ins, but as entities in their own right, turning notions of “life” and “matter” around. The Rabbit Island residency strikes me as an ideal environment for this project, which recalls my childhood experiences of a world populated by animate things, rather than passive objects. What is most important to me is to consider the essential vibrancy of matter, and in this sense it is a philosophical project. I want to think slowly and deeply about the idea that rocks are a vital force.

Aly Ogasian & Claudia O’Steen

Biography
Claudia O’Steen and Aly Ogasian are a collaborative artist duo based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Los Angeles, California, respectively. They have previously been awarded collaborative residencies at Hambidge Center for the Arts & Sciences, Rural Projects, The Wassaic Project, Montalvo Arts Center, The Arctic Circle, and NCCA Saint-Petersburg, and have exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues such as The Russian State Arctic and Antarctic Museum, apexart, Flux Factory, Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Ohio State University amongst others. Claudia received a BFA from Watkins College of Art Design & Film and an MFA in Digital + Media at Rhode Island School of Design. She is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Winthrop University. Aly received a BFA from Queen’s University and a MFA in Digital + Media at Rhode Island School of Design. She is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Scripps College.

Artist Statement
O’Steen and Ogasian work collaboratively to produce multimedia, research based installations. Their work incorporates sculptural elements, digital media, drawing, writing, and photography, and their studio practice takes a flexible, idea driven approach.

Their projects always involve fieldwork, and installations incorporate artifacts and “data” collected from the landscape itself, and are inspired by their immediate surroundings. Their work focuses on our relationship with a changing environment, and uses methodologies borrowed from citizen science to critique traditional notions of exploration and conquest.

They attempt to re-orient themselves in a contemporary world dominated by data and technology, where the romantic and adventurous spirit of discovery has been lost or forgotten. They are interested in the moments where science and technology give rise to the nebulous, the enigmatic, the mysterious – where the primary goal is to “make sense” rather than to objectively know.

Technology is inherently part of the process of exploring, allowing the artists to extend their bodies, senses, and thoughts across great distances whether deep within or far away. Within this context, wonder connects to an instance of “new knowing”, a re-encountering of familiar terrain.

Their work is performative, casting the artists in the role of explorer or knowledge seeker within scenarios that are at once deeply absurd and poetic. The glitches or errors that occur within the process are celebrated not only as deviations from the intended path, but as potential points of departure for the imagination.

Proposal
Due to its size and depth, Lake Superior exists at a multitude of scales simultaneously, slow moving river, lake and ocean. Fluctuating water levels, monitored in real time across days, years and centuries contribute to our understanding of climate change and its impact on weather, ecosystems and coasts.

For Rabbit Island, we will develop a series of portable sculptures that will function as observational stations as well as repositories of information. These sculptures will be inspired by the NOAA monitoring systems used locally such as the Great Lakes Water Levels Monitoring Network.

Acknowledging that every detail matters, our systems will monitor minute changes that occur on the ground over the time span of the residency. We will poetically measure wind, waves, visibility, water-level and temperature, exploring both the possibilities and limitations afforded by perceptual observation. Our observations will be contextualized vis-a-vis large, ongoing collections of data via satellite imagery, scientific instrumentation, human memory and citizen science intended to help predict the future of the lake. The project will touch upon the lake as a “site of memory” by examining how winter conditions contribute to subsequent summers, while also engaging human memory by exploring indigenous observations of the landscape.

Avery Williamson

Biography
Avery Williamson is an artist and designer originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, currently living and working in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies. There she was awarded the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for extraordinary undergraduate work. Williamson has since shown work in New York, Philadelphia, Nashville and Ann Arbor. Her work has been featured by the Instagram Design Team, the American Craft Council, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Magazine, The Strategist, Bustle and Etsy.

Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores historical and contemporary notions of the archive, Black pleasure and spatiotemporal collapse. My body of work includes weaving, photography, jewelry, painting and drawing. Through these media I explore the narratives of Black women in personal and institutional archives. Within the archive, women are defined by names, occupations or skin color. I return to particular images and remake them in glitter, collage, cloth or color in order to free these figures from the historical narratives into which they’ve been embedded. Visible Black pleasure is important to my practice. Pleasure is safety, experimentation, and choice. Pleasure makes possible the imagination of alternative futures where Black life is expansive and unrestricted.

Proposal
I am interested in using the Rabbit Island Residency to create a collection of collages that include silhouette figures and native plants and materials. The silhouettes are of my grandparents, great aunts, and compelling strangers in my family album. The collages containing these silhouettes serve as the site of time-collapse where people can be at play, in company and in conversation. They are not wedded to any particular time, place or constraints. The organic material introduces the constant of nature through generations. While the homes and structures that housed the ancestors may not exist, the trees, grasses and moss that surrounded them remain. Collage is a material practice that allows me to process experiences for which I do not yet have words. Rabbit Island offers the opportunity for me to consider nature, and site-specific materials as part of or even the foundation of the collages. The plant life and other naturally occurring materials will provide texture to the collages.

Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola & Roosmarijn Pallandt

Biography
Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Mexico City. Her time-based practice explores the fluidity of language through investigative poetics, resulting in a corpus of visual, sonic, and text-based works. She has exhibited and performed at galleries and venues like Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (Mexico), Audiograft Festival of Sound Art (Oxford), Chalton Gallery (London), Grice Bench Gallery (Los Angeles), The Poetry Project (NYC), Anthology Film Archives (NYC), among others. Her critical writings & poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, GasTV, Dolce Stil Criollo, Bombay Gin, philoSOPHIA, Precog Mag, and other publications. She received a BFA in Visual & Critical Studies from SVA, and completed the 2-year program at SOMA in Mexico City. In 2013, she co-founded the experimental editorial platform diSONARE and recently started RIZOMA, a series of performance workshops for imprisoned women.

Roosmarijn Pallandt is a cross-disciplinary visual artist from Amsterdam. Her works echo and embody themes of recollection, transformation, and universal knowledge. She uses a distinct artistically driven research methodology, immersing herself in biotopes as diverse as the deserts, jungles and mountains of Japan, Tibet, and Mexico, among other places. She often employs extensive dialogue with indigenous communities enabling creative collaboration to meet with these natural worlds. Currently her practice extends itself towards the constant metamorphosis and emergence of form, with a focus on the intelligence of nature, shamanism, and the invisible bonds that make up the fabric of life. Roosmarijn’s work has been shown at Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Mexico, Contemporary Gallery, Kunming, China; Lumen, London, UK; Desert Festival, Alice Springs, Australia; and Kyotographie Japan, amongst others. Her writings and performances have been featured in The New York Times, Phases, FRAME, Damn, Mr Motley, Vogue Japan, SeeAllThis, TL magazine, and more. Her work has been featured in recent publications by VOID photo; Book of Change by Stephen Ellcock, published by Princeton Architectural Press; and Tehran – Life Within Walls, edited by Hamed Khosravi, published by Hatje Cantz. She has been a visiting lecturer at The Sokei University Tokyo, OIST University Okinawa, Delft University of Technology, and the San Francisco Art Institute.

Artist Statement
Lucía: Within the fields of environment, memory and time, I explore the limits of language, using entropy as a rubric to explore broader definitions of forms. My practice is essentially a process; a method of investigative poetics that results in a corpus of visual, sonic, and text-based works. I think of my practice as a drift within residues that are never vanished, but evoking new mind collisions, revealing new or possibly hidden epistemologies.

Roosmarijn: In search of a deep sense of shared belonging and interdependence, my work explores connections among mythology, geography and the ambiguous intersections of memory and perception, I seek the depth of ecological interdependence and the subtle connections that make up the fabric of life. Fascinated by infinite versions of narration bursting out through the emergences of patterns and rhythms that make up the living world, I build installations employing photography, film, textiles and sound.My practice is an exploration into deeply rooted knowledge of ceaseless cycles and its memory and power to transform. My work allows the viewer to step into a multi- dimensional and continuous flow of pulsations, where nothing is ever static.

Proposal
Ecology is the house of logos, our dwelling place. But language is endemic. And orality—sound—a mimetic action. How can one engage with an environment’s dynamism, where language’s pulse is mysteriously hiding? How can a landscape reveal its own rhythms, patterns and frequencies to the human mind and spirit?

Through sound recollections and field recordings, walks, exercises for deep listening and poetic experimentations, we want to create an ecological partiture in collaboration with the Island’s rhythmic energy, to ultimately create a sound installation and interspecies performance, translating the resonance of living organisms into a multidimensional eco-score.

By aligning our biological tempos to the landscape using different recording techniques, we want to establish an intimate dialogue with the Island as both, a place and a being with a specific vibration.

Being two interdisciplinary artists from different backgrounds interested in the deep ecology of sound, we come together to explore the elemental flow of occult language and the interrelation between species. We want to honor Rabbit Island by engaging with the landscape’s hybridity as a body of water, air, fire and earth that is evolving with millions of species, providing counterbalance and ecological resistance to the earth’s catastrophic climate disaster.

The 2021 Residency Selection Process

The 2021 open call received an unprecedented 902 applications. This was three times more than any previous open call, and represented a diverse set of proposals and practices.

The five member Selection Committee was composed of Rabbit Island alumni, a board member, and an independent museum professional. In response to a three-fold increase in the expected number of applications we extended the review period by an additional week to provide enough time for the Selection Committee to review every application. Additionally, we discovered about halfway through the application period that we would have an extraordinary number of submissions and invited the Committee members to begin reviewing applications from February 19th, as they were being received.

Three previous Rabbit Island Residents from the Committee read each submission’s text, reviewed work samples, and followed web links provided by applicants. They were then joined by the two additional Committee members who helped create an initial shortlist of exemplary applications.

The Selection Committee then met on March 27th and over the course of a seven-hour videoconference reviewed a shortlist of 103 applications, further narrowing it to a collective shortlist of 17 applications. The Committee then reviewed each of the 17 applications in detail once again. After several rounds of discussion, the Committee decided on a finalist list of 10 applications. The finalists were interviewed by videoconference for approximately 20 minutes each over the course of two days, 5 interviews a day, April 10th and 11th. The Committee deliberated for an additional 6 hours during the videoconferences over that weekend, ultimately reaching a decision to award 4 residencies.

View the Rabbit Island 2021 Residents here

Rabbit Island 2021 Residency Selection Committee
Alice Pedroletti, 2018 Resident
Duy Hoàng, 2018 Resident
Luce Choules, 2016 Resident
Patricia Buffa, Director of Digital Strategy for Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Rob Gorski, President of the Rabbit Island Foundation

Rabbit Island 2021 Residency Selection Coordinator
Andrew Ranville, Director of the Rabbit Island Foundation

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