The Suns and Stars artist residency took place in Amsterdam from 22 January to 12 February, 2024 and was guided by curators Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska, who attended to the project as participants in a temporary community, a sociality in which the ‘coming together’ is matter to work from. The curatorial and artistic researches regarding 'the concept of borderland' and 'the act of translation' by Anastasija and Marjoca respectively are not curatorial frames, but points of departure from which other artistic research projects can take root. The invited artists have relational practices, which means that they develop their work in collaboration, working with 'others' to coalesce into artistic practices.

Eléonore de Montesquiou is a French-Estonian artist and activist based in Berlin and Tallinn. Sparked by her own experience of uprootedness, she addresses the intricacies and ambiguities of living in the margins. Her work is characterised by a documentary approach, translated into testimonial films, drawings and texts, and deals with migration, displacement, and the concepts of translation and borders. In collaborative projects, she critically examines the policies of states such as Estonia by amplifying voices of people in borderlands. In the same spirit, she started working with French-speaking asylum seekers in Estonia.

Viktorija Ilioska (MK) is a choreographer and performer based in North Macedonia and Germany. She holds a master’s degree in Choreography and Performance from the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at Justus Liebig University, Gießen. Since 2010, she has been an active member of Lokomotiva and Culture Nomad Dance Academy, a network dedicated to strengthening creative and artistic forces in contemporary dance contexts in the post-Yugoslav region. In her current choreographic research, she anatomises the notions of pumping, sucking, extraction, and exhaustion. With this research, she simultaneously fosters the processes of enabling, nurturing, and growth.

Elke Uitentuis (NL) is an artist, activist, and mother based in Amsterdam. As part of Osterholt/Uitentuis, she co-initiated projects in, among others, Caïro, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Perth, Rio de Janeiro, and Amsterdam, building a sense of commons and community within localities heavily defined by hegemonic power structures. In 2013, Elke joined the refugee collective ‘We Are Here’. With undocumented migrants, she founded ‘Here to Support’ and developed the ‘We Are Here Academy’. Today, Elke runs the Social Practice Workshop at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, and she is part of ‘We Sell Reality’, a collective of both undocumented and documented artists.


More context to the images

1 - 4.
Visit to art space in the making GROND. Based at ‘Het Nieuwe Bajesdorp’, the GROND collective is building a space – consisting of a black box, kitchen, canteen, workshop, and two gardens – for artistic encounters and experiments, to bolster collectivity, sustainability, cross-pollination, and process-based practices. The communities of Bajesdorp and GROND (of which Elke is part) aspire to plunge into a state of learning in pursuit of a practice of solidarity. As such, GROND is a role model and a trailblazer developing new recipes for living and working together.
5 - 6.
The Social Practice workshop at the Rijksakademie is developped by Elke Uitentuis in collaboration with We Sell Reality, resident artists, neighbouring contemporary art space Framer Framed, and a range of local organisations and groups. In this environment we (artists and curators) presented our practices to elucidate the connections between the discourses we engage in and the methods we use.
7.
The Rijksakademie archive of 45,000 titles, from 1528 to the present, includes books, exhibition catalogues, monographs, periodicals, and audio-visual documents. The collection provides an overview of three centuries of art education and artistic practices. A large part of the collection consists of art works and books by former students, professors, directors, and residents. The library focuses on the fields of art and art theory, and has sections such as literature and philosophy. The artists' books section is an important part of the library.
8.
Viktorija and Eléonore made long walks at Marineterrein and took a swim after a sauna session.
9 - 10.
Reflection sessions were part of the residency for which we used exercises proposed by Viktorija. These exercises are based on feedback practices that are used in theatre and performance practices. One of the session was an imaginative exploration in which we enacted a reflective conversation, as if the symposium that is planned in September had already taken place. During the session it became clear that we all were imagining a type of ongoing, non-linear three day event where all kinds of discussions and alliances are bound to unfold. An event in which connections can be visualised between GROND and Marineterrein and between local communities whose existences resonate with forms of criticality.
11.
On the 1st of February 2024, we organised Translation Night, a convivial evening about “translation as collaboration and repair” for which we invited a group of people, curators, collaborators, and fellow artists, who in their practices and daily lives experience translation and how different languages are shaped in different contexts, how certain events push languages to the margins or bring them towards the centre. During the evening we also spoke about Eléonore’s bilangual book 33 Monsters in Russian and English, and the trilingual (English, Korean, and Dutch) Resonance of a Breathing Bowl a book that was a collaboration by Anastasija Pandilovska, Sojung Jun, Marjoca de Greef and Hyeisoo Kim, and published by Suns and Stars last year. We discussed the decisions in translation that were made, not just in conveying the meaning, but also the context in which these languages and stories exist. As a way to think of translation in relation to the city, we also read a text by Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai in Urban Future Manifestos. In their short manifesto they call for a city in which the act of translations opens up a possibility for eventuality and of writing anew.
12.
Elke Uitentuis worked together with We sell Reality to initiate rehearsal sessions for a choir – to be founded – for documented and undocumented singers.
13.
Following this first initial meeting at the Social Practice workshop, we were invited for a second visit and a meeting with We Sell Reality, the collective consisting of a group of around 15 social designers of both undocumented and documented artists. The collective was getting ready for a fashion show at Framer Framed so we got a preview of their work.