Panther Residencies

HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is pleased to present, as part of its new program, the so-called Panther Residencies. Named after the dazzling mythical creature and heraldic animal of Styria, the program unites two grants for artists whose practice is in the field of contemporary art. 

The focus is on the annual promotion of one international and one outstanding local position. In close exchange with HALLE FÜR KUNST Styria and the City of Graz, the guests are provided with project-specific support for their artistic work. In the course of the residencies, a new work is produced through research and exchange with local protagonists, which is presented within the exhibition program.

HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark sees itself as an initiator of diverse dialogues and would like to make local resources available to both international and local fellows in order to create the best possible living and working environment. At the same time, it is a concern of the institution to introduce new and relevant artistic voices to the diverse cultural and art scene in Graz as well as to the general public. Thus, guests are invited to present their practice in various public formats and to respond to the vibrant local art scene. Both residency formats are directly related to the thematic focus of the institution through their concrete connection to an exhibition.

The international fellowship is awarded by one of the two curators at the institution in the context of a project. This first international resident is Colin Self (*1987, in Aloha, lives in Berlin), who presented a new performance piece within the series Give Rise To on February 25 and 26. The local fellowship is linked to a group exhibition and is announced through an open call.

In line with the group exhibition Ridiculously Yours! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark launched an Open Call addressed to artists who are connected to the city of Graz and/​or the surrounding region. 

The STAGES format is as radical as it is simple. For one evening, the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark provides a platform for artists from the surrounding area. A part of the exhibition hall will serve as a stage to learn more about the work of the artists. Our guest decides whether this will be realized through a performance, a lecture, a conversation, a screening or any other form of art.

The nominee for the Open Call in fall 2023 is the artist Bernadette Laimbauer, who will create an evening for the STAGES format in December at the HALLE FÜR KUNST. Laimbauer combines elements of the performing and visual arts, and the medium of performance can contain surprising moments in the familiar. Reacting intuitively in the moment also plays an important role in her performances. She tries to discover the ​“humor in the seemingly tragic”.

From the submissions of the Open Call 2022, the artist Antonia De La Luz Kašik was nominated for the Panther Residency of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark.

Antonia De La Luz Kašik

In the filmmaker’s work, the camera plays a central role as an apparatus. Through it, different visual worlds are connected or moved into one another. To this end, she explores the technical possibilities of analog cameras and film material. Following on from existing works, the artist is developing a new film for her participation in Systems of belief, which moves at the limits of the medium.

Optical constructions are attached to the camera, which, connected between the apparatus and the outside world, both transform the depicted reality and become part of the image themselves. In the process, kaleidoscopic visual worlds are created that mirror and abstract the gaze. Various practices of abstract and experimental forms of filmmaking play a central role in the exhibition and enable new perspectives on the understanding of technology, perception and the world. Therefore, the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is pleased to have nominated Antonia de la Luz Kašik, an artist for the Panther Residency who dedicates herself anew to these phenomena from a contemporary perspective.

Antonia de la Luz Kašik, born in Graz in 1993, studied graphic design and visual communication at the Universidad Mayor de San Simón in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and graduated from the Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film in Vienna in 2018. She is currently studying video and video installation at the Academy of Fine Arts and working on her own artistic projects using the analog medium of film, as well as animation, drawing, printmaking and photography. As a cinematographer she works in collaboration with other artists, most recently for the performances of Eva Sommer and the feature film BEATRIX by Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky.

For the first international Panther Residency at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Cathrin Mayer has invited artist Colin Self to develop a new work for the performance series Give Rise to.

Colin Self

For Tip the Ivy Self selects the narrative framework of a prison where the inmates attempt to achieve freedom somewhere between reality and a world of dreams. One of the characters is less a real person and rather an avatar who communicates via the screen of a smartphone. This role was partly inspired by a number of real profiles of Tik Tok users, who share otherwise censored information in non-democratic countries by means of various sequences of movement, an example being make-up tutorials.

Tip the Ivy is a project that on the one hand emphasizes the positive power of queer communities on the basis of collaboration and shared work, and on the other hand enacts the bitter political realities of surveillance and censorship in the here and now in the form of an experimental opera. Self achieves this via a reinterpretation of the classical genre in which he sees voices and song as a collective force. For this he developed a new technique for group singing that he calls XOIR. The focus is not on reciting musical scores but on somatic awareness and the shared organization of bodies and voices.

Colin Self (*1987 Aloha, lives in Berlin) is a lecturer at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute in Berlin and has presented his work at the Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam; HAU Berlin; Neues Museum, Berlin; The Kitchen, New York; and Issue Project Room, New York; among many international festivals and venues. He is a Rhizome Commission Grant recipient and a Queer Art Mentorship Fellow. He is a co-founder of NYC queer performance collective Chez Deep and Radical Diva Grant.

From the 2021 Open Call submissions, the artist duo Ilkin Beste Cirak and Nigel Gavus has been nominated for the Panther Residency of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark.

Ilkin Beste Cirak und Nigel Gavus

Coming from different backgrounds and currently working as an artist duo, Ilkin Beste Cirak and Nigel Gavus seek a synthesis of different media: poetry, film, literature, sculpture and space are their fields of exploration. Their work is clearly structured and multi-layered. Their common goal is to translate invisible themes into a visual language and to question the role of visual ​“codes” in our society. Their collaboration addresses identity and belonging, as well as spatial design in the manner of relational art and aesthetics. Their first cinematic collaboration Letters from a Window, premiered at Diagonale 21′ and won the audience award for the most popular Austrian short film under ten minutes at the Vienna Shorts Festival.

In the context of Domestic Drama, the artist duo will produce a new film that combines the themes of the exhibition with the specific setting of the city of Graz.

Ilkin Beste Cirak, born in 1994 in Izmir (TR), is a visual artist and poet. She is a graduate of the University of Applied Arts (Social Design) and is currently studying Sculpture & Spatial Strategies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Starting from public spaces as the core of coexistence, she deals with localities, identity, cultural production and participation. She lives and works in Graz and Vienna.

Nigel Gavus, born 1992 in Graz, is a filmmaker and visual artist. He graduated from the Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film and is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In his work he deals with time, memory, identity and the relationship between poetry and cinema. He lives and works in Vienna and Graz.