Transylvania Trust launches at Bánffy Castle, Bonţida (Cluj Co., Romania), an international creative residency programme for artists, craftsmen, artisans, makers, creators and tech-savvies interested in and preoccupied by the reinterpretation of historical values through new narratives, spaces and shapes, configurations and patterns. The interdisciplinary residency programme ensures the temporal and spatial conditions for learning and creation in an exceptional architectural and historical setting: Bánffy Castle, Bonţida.

The creative residency will take place between 29 August and 12 September 2021.

 Concept

We set out in search of lost time. The utopian idea of returning, proposed by Marcel Proust, starts with the taste of a madeleine. The involuntary experiencing of time is a challenge.

We invite you to discover the historical qualities of the place, to find that taste, smell, touch, sound or even image and idea that will urge you to experiment with personal and collective memory, to recall memories, to experience nostalgia while dreaming, imagining. This involuntariness by moving back and forth in time opens the way to reinterpreting the self and the space from a playful and innocent perspective.

Confrontation with the self calls forth past/future experiences, similarly to the movements on a weaving loom, by using patterns, rhythm, seriality.

We interweave the synergies and the story of the place. We are re-adapting Bánffy Castle as a sensory space for experimentation, by combining artistic creation with manual skills and new technologies!

 

Keywords: crafting stories, forms and shapes, history, temporality, sensory memory, nostalgia, dreaming, imagining, utopia, playful, resources, regeneration, collective art, co-production

 

Applications may be submitted in .pdf form by 1 August 2021 to the address: office@transylvaniatrust.ro.

Conditions of participation:

1. Registration Form
   • Name, postal address, email address, phone no.
   • Short CV
2. Portfolio
3. Concept of project idea specifying the involved disciplines (e.g. arts, architecture, technology, crafts)

The list of selected concepts will be published on 10 August 2021 on the website of the organiser. These concepts will be further developed and implemented in interdisciplinary teams with the possibility of fusion of similar proposals.

The documentation prepared by the organisers in order to form an idea about the environment can be accessed here.

The residency is part of project ARTECH. Arts, Rediscovery, Traditions, Eclectic, Contemporary, Heritage, implemented by Transylvania Trust and its partners: Archikidz, Gjirokastra Foundation and Comarca del Maestrazgo, co-financed by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, and NKA, Hungary.