Many Mini Residency is a short term residency program open to all applicants and in July 2011 will be hosted by Skydive, an artist-run space in Houston, TX.
Many Mini Residency is a short-term residency program operated in conjunction with alternative exhibition venues in Europe and the United States. In July 2011, Many Mini Residency will be hosted at Skydive, an artist-run exhibition venue in Houston, Texas. Many Mini Residency is a one-room residency that is open to applicants from all disciplines (art and non-art alike) and encourages participants to customize their residency experience. There is no minimum time-limit for a stay at the residency but the maximum stay allows use of the space for half a day. The space may be used for public programs, personal studio time, a rehearsal space, a dinner, or whatever the resident sees fit. Participants provide documentation and a short statement about their time spent in the residency to serve as both a record and a resource displayed online as the final component of the project.
The name ‘Many Mini’ encompasses two main components of the project. The ‘Many’ describes the open call for proposals and the resulting multiplicity of responses and participants. The ‘Mini’ component of the residency describes the limited amount of time available and the scale of the room. Many Mini Residency was conceived as one response to an ongoing conversation about how artists organize to extend opportunities for making work and about the relationship of artists to the artwork they produce. Currently, the distinction between artist and curator, artist as curator, artist as activist, restaurant as artwork (and an endless list of other pairings), is more a matter of creating temporary alliances and strategies between people and sites rather than strategies for questioning artistic production itself. Additionally, artistic strategies for these sites have become increasingly diverse and there is unprecedented fluidity between the various roles artists inhabit as individuals, collaborators, collectives, and cooperatives.
Skydive utilizes an open and collaborative model for producing its programming. The aim of Skydive is to host a range of art practices that push the limits of their material forms including non-traditional methods of sculpture, installation, video, performance, text and web-based projects and works that engage the viewer through participation. Its mission is to broaden the spectrum of dialogue in Houston by bringing in artists from outside of Texas. Many Mini Residency fulfils these goals while also encouraging participation from local residents.
Many Mini Residency: Houston at Skydive will additionally exist in conversation with other Many Mini Residencies; the first hosted by The Berlin Office in Berlin, July 2008 and the forthcoming residency hosted by Koh-i-noor in Copenhagen, January 2012. Many Mini Residency, therefore, not only provides an opportunity for interaction among participants within each locale, but creates a comparable portrait of current artistic practices in each international city where it occurs.
http://www.manymini.org/houston
