Hydra PACE – Platform for Artistic Collaboration and Exchange is the collaboration of three partners from Slovenia (DobraVaga Gallery, part of Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Ljubljana), Slovakia (international artist-in-residence program K.A.I.R. Košice Artist in Residence, Košice) and Palestine (Ramallah Municipality, Ramallah). The project aims to form a growing network of existing and new international artist-in-residence programs for established and emerging artists. The idea for the art residencies project evolved on the threshold of the pandemic crisis that challenged us to reconsider and redesign numerous projects and programs, including art residencies. Hydra PACE is thus offering a model of concurrent international residencies, with an emphasis on combined and flexible live–online activities for artists to network, collaborate, exchange practices and experience different social, political, and cultural contexts.

At the end of January 2021, the open call for visual or interdisciplinary artists, living and working in Slovenia, Palestine, or Slovakia, to take part in a two-month residency in selected cities, concluded. The jury deliberated on the 30 submissions received in two phases: preselection and final selection. The latter was carried out by Anja Zver (Head of the Visual Arts Program at Kino Šiška and the DobraVaga Gallery), Sally Abu Bakr (Director of the Culture and Social Affairs Department at the Ramallah Municipality) and Zuzana Kotiková (Manager of KAIR Košice Artist in Residence) with Petra Housková (Project Manager of KAIR Košice Artist in Residence). The preselection teams also included Ajda Ana Kocutar, Urška Aplinc, Rea Vogrinčič (all DobraVaga Gallery), Yazid Anani (curator, A. M. Qattan Foundation), and Anna Mária Trávničková and Tatiana Takáčová (both KAIR Košice Artist in Residence).

The selected artists are: Michaela Nagyidaiová (Slovakia) and Abed Alrahman Shabaneh (Palestine) for the DobraVaga residency, Nežka Zamar (Slovenia) and Mohammed Al-Hawajri (Palestine) for the KAIR, Košice residency, and Jana Zatvarnická (Slovakia) and Đejmi Hadrović (Slovenia) for the Ramallah residency. You can read their presentations here.

Each residency includes a separate apartment and artist studio free of charge, an artist fee of 1,000 €, per diems, material costs (limited), travel costs (limited), accommodation and travel costs for the final meeting in Ramallah.

All six artists will begin collaborating with the partner organizations prior to arrival, with the two-month residency taking place in June and July. All participating artists and representatives of the partners will also attend a final meeting in Ramallah in August.

The aim of the partners is to develop and design a sustainable and stable model of adaptable art residencies for ever-changing circumstances. The project is supported by the Anna Lindh Foundation and the European Union and takes place from December 2020 to August 2021.