CALENDAR
SOON
Publication We don't want to be stars
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ARCHIVE
JUNE 25, 2025
We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations) Movie Night.
An event organized by Suns and Stars in collaboration with Cavia. See here
Location: Filmhuis Cavia, Van Hallstraat 52-I, Amsterdam
Suns and Stars and Cavia join in an Equivocal Translational Movie Night, presenting short movies not as a plurality of perspectives, but as a multiplicity of worlds. The night starting early in the evening shall be filled with murmurings of restless bodies, earth’s growls, and sonic textures. No dialogue, no subtitles.
The program began at 17:00 with a Reading Group accompanied by some tasty bites. During the session, we read excerpts from the chapters “Of Pigs and Bodies” and “Bodies and Souls” in Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds:
To translate is to situate oneself in the space of the equivocation and to dwell there … it is to communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming a univocality—the essential similarity—between what the Other and We are saying.
FILM 1
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (2024)
by Malena Szlam
Australia, Canada, 16mm to digital, 20’00
Sound recording, composition and mix by Lawrence English
Tracing a path along the remnants of the ancient Gondwana landmass in the central eastern ranges of Australia, the film Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya animates “alternative cartographies of time” in which we become part of moments of a living planet – engulfed by the orange fiery tides of volcanic flares of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption – sometimes in its armpits, sometimes on its crest, sometimes stretched out, laying on the beach, as time folds in on itself.
We acknowledge the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where "Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya" was filmed. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
FILM 2
Journey Of A Piece Of Soil (2013-present)
by Trương Công Tùng
Vietnam, HD, 32’44"
The reverberations of an alarming summon stir a journey through ancestral lands and fallen/fairy tale cities, with indistinct traces of life and death – a ghost, a ghost, a ghost. A ghost wanders from East to West, from South to North. A ghost is howling. Carried between elsewhere or elsewhen, an unearthed piece of soil is engaged in a ritualized relationship with its carrier, a bond that unfolds intricate equivocal relationality because it inhabits multiplicity. Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất is a present day non-focal narrative of a wandering, a Journey of a Piece of Soil disclosing “something nonevident about the world”, hinting at “a plane of immanence filled with intensities”.
“My sincere thanks to the peoples, the soils, the rocks, the trees, the insects, the souls that worked with me in this film” (Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất, 2013, 32’20”)
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APRIL 5, 2025
Sociality in Rehearsal Reading Group #4 and #5
An event organized by Suns and Stars in collaboration with GROND.
Location: GROND, Blijdorpstraat 1, Amsterdam
The reading group series, developed within the framework of We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations), seeks to engage with the imminent potentialities of the community or assembly we are temporarily part of. Through collective readings, we delve into the shared experience at hand — “to give on and with every possible contamination.”[1]
Reading Group #4
The 4th Reading Group, guided by Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska, focuses on selected fragments from Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire by Jack Halberstam, including the section “Wildness, Loss, and Death.”
Reading Group #5
The 5th Reading Group guided by Anastasija Pandilovska and Marc Nukoop, is broadcast by Radio GROND. It focuses on selected fragments from the article “It’s Just the City after All!” by AbdouMaliq Simone.
1. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013), 110.
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THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
International exhibition and symposium organized by Faculty of things that can't be learned (FR~U), Skopje
EXHIBITION – THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
Opening night: Thursday, 27th June, 2024 at 20:00
June 27th - July 30th, 2024
Artists: Winnie Herbstein (Glasgow/Amsterdam), Filip Jovanovski (Skopje), Anu Vahtra (Tallinn)
Curator: Ivana Vaseva (Skopje)
Location: Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia, Skopje
SYMPOSIUM – THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
June 28th and 29th 2024
Symposium contributors: Ola Hassanain (Khartoum/Amsterdam), Ingel Vaikla (Tallinn/Brussels), Felix Melia (London), Marjoca de Greef (Amsterdam), Anastasija Pandilovska (Skopje/Amsterdam), Brigit Arop (Tallinn), Winnie Herbstein (Glasgow/Amsterdam), Filip Jovanovski (Skopje), Anu Vahtra (Tallinn)
PROGRAM SYMPOSIUM
Friday, 28th of June 2024
20:00 Lecture by Ola Hassanain (Khartoum/Amsterdam) followed by a discussion with Marjoca de Greef & Anastasija Pandilovska (Amsterdam) and Ivana Vaseva (Skopje)
21:00 Film screening: Ingel Vankla - Papagalo, what’s the Time? (2022) 7’
Moi aussi, je regarde (2024) 23’
Felix Melia - Money for Nothing (2021) 35’
Short conversation with the artists Ingel Vaikla and Felix Melia
Saturday, 29th of June 2024
19:00 until 21:30 THE CITY IS PUBLIC - Public Rehearsal, a collective performative bike tour of the city of Skopje with several guides as part of the Laboratory for Performative Space Research THE CITY AS A STAGE. With contributions of Winnie Herbstein, Filip Jovanovski, and Anu Vahtra.
21:30 until 23:30 THE CITY IS PUBLIC - HNU performance research studio for food, science and art and DJ Indog on the plateau in front of the Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia
PRINTABLE PROGRAM BOOKLET SKOPJE
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (2024)
by Malena Szlam
Australia, Canada, 16mm to digital, 20’00
Sound recording, composition and mix by Lawrence English
Tracing a path along the remnants of the ancient Gondwana landmass in the central eastern ranges of Australia, the film Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya animates “alternative cartographies of time” in which we become part of moments of a living planet – engulfed by the orange fiery tides of volcanic flares of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption – sometimes in its armpits, sometimes on its crest, sometimes stretched out, laying on the beach, as time folds in on itself.
We acknowledge the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where "Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya" was filmed. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
FILM 2
Journey Of A Piece Of Soil (2013-present)
by Trương Công Tùng
Vietnam, HD, 32’44"
The reverberations of an alarming summon stir a journey through ancestral lands and fallen/fairy tale cities, with indistinct traces of life and death – a ghost, a ghost, a ghost. A ghost wanders from East to West, from South to North. A ghost is howling. Carried between elsewhere or elsewhen, an unearthed piece of soil is engaged in a ritualized relationship with its carrier, a bond that unfolds intricate equivocal relationality because it inhabits multiplicity. Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất is a present day non-focal narrative of a wandering, a Journey of a Piece of Soil disclosing “something nonevident about the world”, hinting at “a plane of immanence filled with intensities”.
“My sincere thanks to the peoples, the soils, the rocks, the trees, the insects, the souls that worked with me in this film” (Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất, 2013, 32’20”)
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APRIL 5, 2025
Sociality in Rehearsal Reading Group #4 and #5
An event organized by Suns and Stars in collaboration with GROND.
Location: GROND, Blijdorpstraat 1, Amsterdam
The reading group series, developed within the framework of We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations), seeks to engage with the imminent potentialities of the community or assembly we are temporarily part of. Through collective readings, we delve into the shared experience at hand — “to give on and with every possible contamination.”[1]
Reading Group #4
The 4th Reading Group, guided by Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska, focuses on selected fragments from Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire by Jack Halberstam, including the section “Wildness, Loss, and Death.”
Wildness, [Michael] Taussig proposes, is 'the death space of signification'. It cannot mean because it has been cast as that which exceeds meaning. Wildness cannot tell because it frames telling as another tool of colonial rule. Wildness cannot speak without producing both the colonial order that gives it meaning and the disruption of that order through temporal and spatial and bodily excess and eccentricity. Any queer theory of wildness runs the risk of reproducing the stable binary of civilization and barbarity that, as Walter Benjamin proposed, nests one inside the other: 'There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarity'. But any queer theory that avoids the category of wildness runs the risk of reproducing the norms it critiques and stabilizing the system it seeks to unsettle.[2]
Reading Group #5
The 5th Reading Group guided by Anastasija Pandilovska and Marc Nukoop, is broadcast by Radio GROND. It focuses on selected fragments from the article “It’s Just the City after All!” by AbdouMaliq Simone.
If the city remains important at all, it is as an ideological object, a repository of aspiration and cultivator of subjectivities, where individuals become ‘cities’ themselves through internalizing the values and capacities that the city was thought to represent (Wachsmuth, 2013). In a more incisive rendition, cities become singular crystallizations of an ‘urban now’ that folds in affects, imaginaries, tools and practices from across diverse historical periods and spatial instantiations, thus pointing to multiple articulations among diverse urban formations (Robinson, 2013).[3]
Blackness has historically been a vehicle to deny what is common, or at least to locate the criteria of what is to be seen and held possible as common firmly within white hands. But since many cities were largely built by black hands, and black bodies often served as the raw materials for generating the new urbanisms of the North, the denial of commonality or its reiteration only in very limited terms leaves out a significant swath of urban experience. That which is left out is not easily recuperated in readily available languages, sensorium or subjectivity. Just as blackness itself is a fabrication, that which is underneath the common, to use Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s words, needs to be invented as well. So no matter how much the city might be ‘finished’ as a locus of urbanization, it is ‘just the city’, i.e. the possibility of reinvention.[4]
Blackness has historically been a vehicle to deny what is common, or at least to locate the criteria of what is to be seen and held possible as common firmly within white hands. But since many cities were largely built by black hands, and black bodies often served as the raw materials for generating the new urbanisms of the North, the denial of commonality or its reiteration only in very limited terms leaves out a significant swath of urban experience. That which is left out is not easily recuperated in readily available languages, sensorium or subjectivity. Just as blackness itself is a fabrication, that which is underneath the common, to use Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s words, needs to be invented as well. So no matter how much the city might be ‘finished’ as a locus of urbanization, it is ‘just the city’, i.e. the possibility of reinvention.[4]
1. Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010): 222.
2. Jack Halberstam, Wild things: The disorder of desire. (Duke University Press, 2020): 39.
3 & 4. AbdouMaliq Simone, “It's Just the City After All!,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40, no. 1 (2016): 211 - 212.
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OCTOBER 7 - 21, 2024
Artist in residence programme Estonia. See here
With artists Maud van den Beuken (NL), Uku Sepsivart (EE), and Zorica Zafirovska (MK), and curator Margit Säde (EE). Organized by EKKM.
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SEPTEMBER 20 - 22, 2024
WE DON'T WANT TO BE STARS (BUT PARTS OF CONSTELLATIONS)
An event organized by Suns and Stars in collaboration with GROND. See here
Location: GROND, H.J.E. Wenckebachweg 46, Amsterdam
With contributions of: Alaa Abu Asad, Anastasija Pandilovska, Doe Maar Niet, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Elke Uitentuis, Fani Konstantinidou, Femke Ravensbergen, Ivana Vaseva, Lianne van Roekel, Margit Säde, Marjoca de Greef, Mohamed Alnoor Hedjaab, Natalia Papaeva, Stefano Harney, Sojung Jun, Viktorija Ilioska, and We Sell Reality.
The three-day event ‘We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations)’ developed by Suns and Stars revolves around the question: How do we create a meeting place for practicing and honing the art of mutually dependent coexistence? The symposium is, so to say, a cooperative gathering in which the common is not defined in terms of identity, but as the work of connection and the alliance between (local) communities, human and nonhuman, that act, build, and create in common. As such, the symposium can be understood as an ongoing experiment in which we engage in a kind of improvised study by “talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering” 1 and passing time together. All while eating collectively prepared meals. The idea of shared giving-and-receiving offers an opportunity to explore a form of communal being in which we can become elusive builders of an unconditional meeting place.
For several years now, Suns and Stars have been exploring, together with artists, how art practices can function as social spaces where other potentialities can be conceived and shaped. The curatorial and artistic research trajects regarding 'the act of translation' and 'the concept of borderland' by our curatorial duo Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska are not meant to be curatorial frames for 'We don’t want to be stars', but points of departure from which other artistic projects can sprout or join in. For the symposium we have invited artists and others who are not necessarily working with translation or borders, but who have relational practices. Artists, researchers, curators, and writers who develop their work in collaboration rather than in an autonomous space, thus inviting other people into their artistic practices.
We found an inspirational partner in GROND because the collective is building a meeting place in such a way that the members of GROND are truly living ‘the art of mutually dependent coexistence’.
Based at ‘Het Nieuwe Bajesdorp’, the GROND collective has just finalized a fabulous space for artistic encounters and experiments; an open space to bolster collectivity, sustainability, cross-pollination and process-based practices, manifesting in a makers’ space, black box, kitchen, canteen, and two gardens. The communities of Bajesdorp and GROND are demonstrating that working and living as a collective is a way to learn how to embrace the process, to give and to take, to be flexible, to share authorship, to be creative in an organic way, to deal with conflicting interests, to be generous, and to let go. Together, they aspire to plunge into a state of learning in pursuance of a practice of solidarity. As such, GROND is a role model and a trailblazer developing new recipes for living and working together to fight alienation, which is increasingly dominant in our society. GROND is not only giving space to the event; members of the GROND community are part of the program as well with workshops, cooking and live performances.
PRINTABLE PROGRAM BOOKLET AMSTERDAM
2. Jack Halberstam, Wild things: The disorder of desire. (Duke University Press, 2020): 39.
3 & 4. AbdouMaliq Simone, “It's Just the City After All!,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40, no. 1 (2016): 211 - 212.
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OCTOBER 7 - 21, 2024
Artist in residence programme Estonia. See here
With artists Maud van den Beuken (NL), Uku Sepsivart (EE), and Zorica Zafirovska (MK), and curator Margit Säde (EE). Organized by EKKM.
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SEPTEMBER 20 - 22, 2024
WE DON'T WANT TO BE STARS (BUT PARTS OF CONSTELLATIONS)
An event organized by Suns and Stars in collaboration with GROND. See here
Location: GROND, H.J.E. Wenckebachweg 46, Amsterdam
With contributions of: Alaa Abu Asad, Anastasija Pandilovska, Doe Maar Niet, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Elke Uitentuis, Fani Konstantinidou, Femke Ravensbergen, Ivana Vaseva, Lianne van Roekel, Margit Säde, Marjoca de Greef, Mohamed Alnoor Hedjaab, Natalia Papaeva, Stefano Harney, Sojung Jun, Viktorija Ilioska, and We Sell Reality.
The three-day event ‘We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations)’ developed by Suns and Stars revolves around the question: How do we create a meeting place for practicing and honing the art of mutually dependent coexistence? The symposium is, so to say, a cooperative gathering in which the common is not defined in terms of identity, but as the work of connection and the alliance between (local) communities, human and nonhuman, that act, build, and create in common. As such, the symposium can be understood as an ongoing experiment in which we engage in a kind of improvised study by “talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering” 1 and passing time together. All while eating collectively prepared meals. The idea of shared giving-and-receiving offers an opportunity to explore a form of communal being in which we can become elusive builders of an unconditional meeting place.
For several years now, Suns and Stars have been exploring, together with artists, how art practices can function as social spaces where other potentialities can be conceived and shaped. The curatorial and artistic research trajects regarding 'the act of translation' and 'the concept of borderland' by our curatorial duo Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska are not meant to be curatorial frames for 'We don’t want to be stars', but points of departure from which other artistic projects can sprout or join in. For the symposium we have invited artists and others who are not necessarily working with translation or borders, but who have relational practices. Artists, researchers, curators, and writers who develop their work in collaboration rather than in an autonomous space, thus inviting other people into their artistic practices.
We found an inspirational partner in GROND because the collective is building a meeting place in such a way that the members of GROND are truly living ‘the art of mutually dependent coexistence’.
Based at ‘Het Nieuwe Bajesdorp’, the GROND collective has just finalized a fabulous space for artistic encounters and experiments; an open space to bolster collectivity, sustainability, cross-pollination and process-based practices, manifesting in a makers’ space, black box, kitchen, canteen, and two gardens. The communities of Bajesdorp and GROND are demonstrating that working and living as a collective is a way to learn how to embrace the process, to give and to take, to be flexible, to share authorship, to be creative in an organic way, to deal with conflicting interests, to be generous, and to let go. Together, they aspire to plunge into a state of learning in pursuance of a practice of solidarity. As such, GROND is a role model and a trailblazer developing new recipes for living and working together to fight alienation, which is increasingly dominant in our society. GROND is not only giving space to the event; members of the GROND community are part of the program as well with workshops, cooking and live performances.
PRINTABLE PROGRAM BOOKLET AMSTERDAM
1. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013), 110.
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THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
International exhibition and symposium organized by Faculty of things that can't be learned (FR~U), Skopje
EXHIBITION – THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
Opening night: Thursday, 27th June, 2024 at 20:00
June 27th - July 30th, 2024
Artists: Winnie Herbstein (Glasgow/Amsterdam), Filip Jovanovski (Skopje), Anu Vahtra (Tallinn)
Curator: Ivana Vaseva (Skopje)
Location: Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia, Skopje
SYMPOSIUM – THE HOUSE THAT IS FALLING APART
June 28th and 29th 2024
Symposium contributors: Ola Hassanain (Khartoum/Amsterdam), Ingel Vaikla (Tallinn/Brussels), Felix Melia (London), Marjoca de Greef (Amsterdam), Anastasija Pandilovska (Skopje/Amsterdam), Brigit Arop (Tallinn), Winnie Herbstein (Glasgow/Amsterdam), Filip Jovanovski (Skopje), Anu Vahtra (Tallinn)
PROGRAM SYMPOSIUM
Friday, 28th of June 2024
20:00 Lecture by Ola Hassanain (Khartoum/Amsterdam) followed by a discussion with Marjoca de Greef & Anastasija Pandilovska (Amsterdam) and Ivana Vaseva (Skopje)
21:00 Film screening: Ingel Vankla - Papagalo, what’s the Time? (2022) 7’
Moi aussi, je regarde (2024) 23’
Felix Melia - Money for Nothing (2021) 35’
Short conversation with the artists Ingel Vaikla and Felix Melia
Saturday, 29th of June 2024
19:00 until 21:30 THE CITY IS PUBLIC - Public Rehearsal, a collective performative bike tour of the city of Skopje with several guides as part of the Laboratory for Performative Space Research THE CITY AS A STAGE. With contributions of Winnie Herbstein, Filip Jovanovski, and Anu Vahtra.
21:30 until 23:30 THE CITY IS PUBLIC - HNU performance research studio for food, science and art and DJ Indog on the plateau in front of the Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia
PRINTABLE PROGRAM BOOKLET SKOPJE
Concept and organization: Faculty of things that can’t be learned - FR~U
Curator: Ivana Vaseva
Production team: Filip Jovanovski, Ivana Samandova, Dimitar Milev
Production assistants and collaborators on the THE CITY IS A PUBLIC platform: Eka Dobrivojevska, Marija Arizankovska
Financial manager: Blagica Petrova
PR: Monika Stojanovska
Design booklet and poster: Anastasija Pandilovska
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04.06.2024 Partner meeting, discuss the FR~U Program in Skopje and the Suns and Stars program in Amsterdam
12.03.2024 Partner meeting, discuss the FR~U Program in Skopje,and the Suns and Stars Residencies in Amsterdam, EKKM program in Tallinn
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JANUARY 22 - FERUARY 12, 2024
Artist in residence programme Amsterdam
With artists Viktorija Ilioska (MK/DE), Eléonore de Montesquiou (EST/DE/FR), Elke Uitentuis (NL), and curators Anastasija Pandilovksa and Marjoca de Greef. Organized by Suns and Stars.
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16.01.2024 Partner meeting – discuss EKKM budget, residencies, and social media
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DECEMBER 1 - JANUARY 31, 2024
Artist in residence programme Skopje
With artists Winnie Herbstein (NL/GB), Filip Jovanovski (MK), Anu Vahtra (EE), and curator Ivana Vaseva. Organized by FR~U
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14.10.2023 Partner meeting - discuss the residencies FR~U and Suns and Stars, PR, updates website
19.09.2023 Partner meeting - discuss residencies, PR, updates
11.07.2023 Partner meeting - discuss the program of FR~U
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LAUNCH WEDONTWANTTOBESTARS.EU
May 31st, 2023
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09.05.2023 Partner meeting - discuss last details website
11.04.2023 Partner meeting - discuss artists proposals
07.03.2023 Partner meeting - discuss content website
26.01.2023 Kick-off meeting
Curator: Ivana Vaseva
Production team: Filip Jovanovski, Ivana Samandova, Dimitar Milev
Production assistants and collaborators on the THE CITY IS A PUBLIC platform: Eka Dobrivojevska, Marija Arizankovska
Financial manager: Blagica Petrova
PR: Monika Stojanovska
Design booklet and poster: Anastasija Pandilovska
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04.06.2024 Partner meeting, discuss the FR~U Program in Skopje and the Suns and Stars program in Amsterdam
12.03.2024 Partner meeting, discuss the FR~U Program in Skopje,and the Suns and Stars Residencies in Amsterdam, EKKM program in Tallinn
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JANUARY 22 - FERUARY 12, 2024
Artist in residence programme Amsterdam
With artists Viktorija Ilioska (MK/DE), Eléonore de Montesquiou (EST/DE/FR), Elke Uitentuis (NL), and curators Anastasija Pandilovksa and Marjoca de Greef. Organized by Suns and Stars.
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16.01.2024 Partner meeting – discuss EKKM budget, residencies, and social media
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DECEMBER 1 - JANUARY 31, 2024
Artist in residence programme Skopje
With artists Winnie Herbstein (NL/GB), Filip Jovanovski (MK), Anu Vahtra (EE), and curator Ivana Vaseva. Organized by FR~U
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14.10.2023 Partner meeting - discuss the residencies FR~U and Suns and Stars, PR, updates website
19.09.2023 Partner meeting - discuss residencies, PR, updates
11.07.2023 Partner meeting - discuss the program of FR~U
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LAUNCH WEDONTWANTTOBESTARS.EU
May 31st, 2023
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09.05.2023 Partner meeting - discuss last details website
11.04.2023 Partner meeting - discuss artists proposals
07.03.2023 Partner meeting - discuss content website
26.01.2023 Kick-off meeting