Welcoming doc

== This document is an introduction to the residency program at Timelab. == *If you feel there is anything missing or unclear, please let us know, we see this document as a collaborative writing.

What is Timelab?
We believe in the power from within.

On a practice of experienced and sustainable experiments, together with a powerful and broad network of partners, we imagine what we want the world to become. Our building represents these becomings.

Our learnings we bundle in knowledge and practice based tools.

We see the role of the organization as a dramaturg: making connections in the multi-perspective of cross-sectoral practice, creating a story that inspires. Our space is our anchor, our research ground, our discussion partner. Our spatial awareness stimulates our critical voice and self-reflection. Our place breathes the soul of our work and shows the scars of a world in all its complexity.

In our relationships we do not shy away from confrontation and continue to look for connections between the present, past, people and domains. We work on a thorough record of our research and remain inquisitive, amazed and eager to learn about many different perspectives.

=== Our research === '''Current projects in Timelab, organized in 6 streams of endless research that connect within time. Past and Future.'''

Redefining Cultural Space What if all culture houses become energy fields in all its dimensions for the neighborhood?

Reshaping Industry What does a business model for material production based on locally harvested bio-based waste materials look like?

Remodeling Common Ground How can we strengthen our common ground by peer learning and better understanding each other?

Reinforcing Practical Learning Can we reconnect to practice and making as a way to reconnect to the world?

Repairable Machines How do we create open R&D as an act of autonomy?

Reclaiming Residencies Can we increase the artist's self-reliance through a residency built on peer and collaborative structures?

=== Our space is a flexible space where functions follows form === Started off with the ambition to investigate how an elastic shared space would look like, we started renovating the old factory in the city center of Ghent.

Today the place houses 3 levels of different but interconnected functions.

Groundfloor - meet and discover

here there is : an arena for debate and presentations an open event space a eatable garden the knotfactory the waterlab the restaurant

First floor - working area

here there is : a co-working office a shared kitchen a makerlab a school

Second floor - reflection and care

here there is : a caring space for workshops (soma, self development, internal work) an artists studio

=== The artistic residency (AiR) art Timelab is not a service === We want to introduce you shortly into the format of the AiR as a central part of the artistic program. Over the years, this format took many forms. With a short historic overview, we want to position ourselves in the world of artists’ residencies. In the annex you find a list of artists that have been in residency in Timelab in the last years.

Although best known from the romantic 19 and 20 centuries where patronage offered a place to stay and work to various artists from abroad, the dominant model of arts residencies emerged in the 1960s offering artists to withdraw from daily life into an escape or, the opposite, a period of work in a local community, often with a need for social or political change. Artists-run-residencies developed an alternative exhibition circuit and made the residency work more visible. In the late 80 and 90s, the globalization and high mobility of people influenced the arts residencies. An international and intercultural encounter brought the hosting organization to the foreground as an independent connector and catalyst of the global art world and the local contemporary art scene. The residential arts center started forming an international fabric of knowledge and experience in the arts. After 2000, this network further intensified and consolidated. With this evolution, also the need to explore the meaning and value of AiR grew.

Digitalisation and social media, cheaper and easier traveling, profoundly diversified and enlarged the field of residency places all over the world. They organized as a field, advocate for their being and with this the competition took off. For many artists, residencies became an important part of their career. Quality standards and selection procedures became an important part of the work of the hosting organization. In this evolution, we cannot deny a rising market logic getting a grip on artistic practice and autonomy of the arts. The AIR risks to bite itself in the tail. Born to disconnect from daily pressure and to have a full autonomy of the creation in order to crack open unseen layers of the mundane, the free form of the AIR becomes a service. As a reaction, hard to grasp models of residencies came into existence. The fluidity led to the rise of more thematic residencies. The focus on the model of working shifts to the ‘what’ we are focussing on. The topics, more and more often becoming topics of sustainability and complex societal issues, also are a hook to work interdisciplinary with experts on the field from different perspectives. Both organizations and artists are rethinking their role in society and the cultural field. The artistic practice develops towards artistic research. Residencies offer other spaces and models for the development of knowledge, not only in the arts, but in society as well. The role of the host to capture and develop a knowledge network, known from the sixties residencies, breaks through the boundaries of the arts scene and delivers more often a necessary contribution to all kinds of research and development. We see businesses inviting artists to develop or redesign products and services or throw another perspective on the non-arts environment. An approach embraced by some, banned by others.

The AiR is part of a format of 2 years cycli in the artistic program that is driven by the collaboration between the sprinters and the hosting organization Timelab. They meet every year in spring to define the research question of the fall residency. The agent, who is part of the timelab staff team, takes up the accountability to bring the research question into the residency program without pushing the artists to give answers, produce or present. The AiR takes place in the fall, 2 artists reside in the Timelab space for 3 months. They are selected based on a thematic link with the streams and projects. Defining the host as a dramaturg and the space as a container leads us to a very specific approach of the residency as a format focused on personal growth, self care, autonomy and reflection as an enabler for a stronger position of the artist in society. The AiR is combined with a yearly camp that is more practical and production based, but is also embedded in the research question set during the sprint.