VACANT ZONE is an online artist residency project, devised in November 2019.
A virtual space without precise limits, waiting to be inhabited and to take form.
A potential world that becomes something different each time.

During the residency two selected participants – chosen or invited – share the vacant zone experience: being there, dialoguing, reflecting and in the end, supported at a technical level, realizing the form and the shape that the project will take from that moment.
Each residency will last four months, at the end of which the website will go blank, in a latent state until the next inhabitance.

Vacant Zone has no predetermined meanings, and it is both global and local, immaterial and concrete, current and historical; it is a process: pure subjective possibility to build and to share.

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Open call

Objective
The selection of two participants for the first edition of Vacant Zone residency.
 
To whom
The Vacant Zone artist residency is open to all artists, scientists, writers, researchers without any distinction of nationality, age, techniques used or connected themes.
The only required things are the possibility to connect online in a stable way and an intermediate level of English. 
 
Duration and location of residency
The duration of the residency is about four months, in the period from from June 8th to October 10th 2020 and it takes place exclusively online without needing a physical environment.
 
Selection committee
The artist Zoya Shokoohi and the curator Matteo Innocenti are responsible for the residency, who select the participants among applied candidates and they follow the participants in residency during different phases of the development of the project.
 
Available tools and resources
The two selected participants are guaranteed:
• Public website
• Online workspace
• Curatorship of the project
• Technical support and tutoring during the first defining phase of the project
• Technical collaboration with a professional programmer in the realization phase of the project
• Promotion and communication activity
 
Residency structure
The residency is carried out in two phases (the first one is about a month and a half and the second one about two months and a half); the defining phase and the realization phase.
 
. Defining phase
The first phase serves to define the project. In this period the participants get to know each other, they develop a dialogue, they share reflections and visions – using the online communication tools of the site: personalized email, video or text chat, and blog. All the materials are progressively inserted on the home page, which in this case functions like a dashboard, like a public feedback of the work in progress.
At the end of the defining phase the participants will arrive at a final project, shared among the participants and the curators.
 
. Realization phase
The second realization phase includes a meeting with the technical programmer in charge of the project and with the curators, in order to define the ways in which the participants’ idea is translatable at a technical level. The taking into consideration the possibilities and limits of the technical tools is an integral part of the residency. The programmer carries on  in the concrete development of the idea, progressively meeting with the participants and the curators. In the end, there are some testing days and then the publication on the home page, in the opening day, in substitution of the previously published materials (dashboard).  
During the period of residency, the participants undertake to publish materials in a progressive manner during the definining phase and to conceive and supervise the final project during the realization phase.
The final project of the residency remains in evidence on the home page for at least two months, as an online exhibition, and no later than the publication of the first materials of the next residence, from that time it will be placed in a category “archive” of the website.
 
Application documents required
(all the documents must be in English)
• A CV containing: name, surname, address, e-mail, telephone, training, activities in the area of competence.
• A portfolio including the personal statement (maximum size 20mb)
• A motivation letter for the participation in the residency (max 2000 characters)
• A copy of a valid identity document 
 
The required documents must be sent using the specific application form on the website, no later than the 31st May 2020.
The selected participants will be sent an application form to be sent back, signed and scanned, to the organization by email.
 
Reproductive, distribution, communication rights
Participants in the residency shall grant to the organization, free of charge and exclusively, all the reproductive, distribution and communication rights, with the possibility that the organization or other third parties designated by the organization may make the widest possible use of these rights on a global scale, temporarily or permanently, by any means and in any form.
 
Approval
By participating in the initiative, the participants acknowledge and implicitly approve the rules contained in this application call, without exception. The participants declares that he has carefully read these regulations and therefore accepts them in all their points. 
Residency structure
The residency is carried out in two phases, each with the same duration  (the first one is about a month and a half and the second one about two months and a half); the defining phase and the realization phase.
 
.Defining phase
The first phase serves to define the project. In this period the artists get to know each other, they develop a dialogue, they share reflections and visions –- using the online communication tools of the site: personalized email, video or text chat, and blog. All the materials are progressively inserted on the home page, which in this case functions like a dashboard, like a public feedback of the work in progress.
At the end of the defining phase the artists will arrive at a final project, shared among the artists and the curators.
 
. Realization phase
The second realization phase includes a meeting with the technical programmer in charge of the project and with the curators, in order to define the ways in which the artists’ idea is translatable at a technical level. The taking into consideration the possibilities and limits of the technical tools is an integral part of the residency. The programmer carries on  in the concrete development of the idea, progressively meeting with the artists and the curators. In the end, there are some testing days and then the publication on the home page, in the opening day, in substitution of the previously published materials (dashboard).  
During the period of residency, the artists undertake to publish materials in a progressive manner during the definining phase and to conceive and supervise the final project during the realization phase.
The final project of the residency remains in evidence on the home page for at least two months, as an online exhibition, and no later than the publication of the first materials of the next residence, from that time it will be placed in a category “archive” of the website.
 
Application documents required
(all the documents must be in English)
• A CV containing: name, surname, address, e-mail, telephone, training, activities in the artistic field (i.e. solo or group exhibitions, awards, residencies, workshop).
• A portfolio including the personal statement (maximum size 20mb)
• A motivation letter for the participation in the residency (max 2000 characters)
• A copy of a valid identity document 
 
The required documents must be sent using the specific application form on the website, no later than the 8th March 2020.
The selected artists will be sent an application form to be sent back, signed and scanned, to the organization by email.
 
Reproductive, distribution, communication rights
Participants in the residency shall grant to the organization, free of charge and exclusively, all the reproductive, distribution and communication rights, with the possibility that the organization or other third parties designated by the organization may make the widest possible use of these rights on a global scale, temporarily or permanently, by any means and in any form.
 
Approval
By participating in the initiative, the artists acknowledge and implicitly approve the rules contained in this application call, without exception. The participating artist declares that he has carefully read these regulations and therefore accepts them in all their points. 
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Application

(max 3 pages, PDF)

(max 20 MB, PDF)

(max 2500 characters, PDF)

(max 2 MB, JPG)

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About Us

Our vision 
Vacant Zone intends to be a space for inhabiting and sharing. Our aim is to stimulate personal visions, to be shaped through technological tools and digital language – so their use is creative. We find interesting, over time, to show the similarities and differences between the ways in which participants will interpret the residency.
All this concerns the themes of identity, citizenship, coexistence. The project is “global” both for the formation of its working group – composed of a curator, an artist and a technical team – and for the way it is propagated; we want to create opportunities for intercultural dialogue, with no limits whatsoever.

Zoya Shokoohi
Zoya Shokoohi has a scientific and artistic education (Chemical Engineering, University of Isfahan; Academy of Fine Arts in Florence). In her research, in fact, science and art are put in relation, to the point of revealing the paradoxical nature of their connections. One of the main issues of her artworks is the question about her own position in the western and eastern urban context, and for this reason, much of his work focuses on the “necessary socio-political activities of today’s human being”.
Among her recent projects: Zar (performance, International Dance Academy Berlin), Base for dialogue (performance, Museo del Novecento, Florence), Unstable history (book print and sculpture, Stibbert Museum, Florence and Academy of fine arts in Florence), Are you protected? (performance, Palazzo di Acquaviva, Atri, Teramo), This sculpture has no base (Safavi House, Isfahan), 30 hours (Aknoon gallery and Motorkhooneh gallery, Shiraz).

Matteo Innocenti
Matteo Innocenti is a curator, art historian and critic. As a curator he has collaborated with museums and institutions (including Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato, Galleria dell’Accademia Firenze, MAD. Murate Art District), with non-profit spaces, Italian and foreign art galleries, artist’s residencies.
Recent curatorial projects include Estuario Project Space, A certain identity (Italy and Lithuania), Conflict Correspondences and A Place to Be.
He is the creator and director of La Portineria, art project space in Florence.
In the critical and journalistic field, he has written and writes for art magazines such as ATP Diary, Artribune, Exibart, Flash Art, as well as for catalogs and magazines. He teaches in academic and specialization courses.

Technical Team
The project is supported by an international technical team composed of Mahmood Bagheri (Technical Lead) and Amin Shahnazari (Software Architecture).
Thanks to their experience in the field of technological tools and applications, the team, working together with the participants and the curators, will ensure that projects, during the various residencies, take a “concrete” and optimized form for the web.

Contact Us

email:   info@vacantzone.com

   +39 3485655831

  Vacant Zone