Cultural Map of the International Residencies of BMKOES

In 2024, the International Residency Program of the BMKOES expands its activities to Seoul, South Korea.

In 2024, the International Residency Program of the BMKOES expands its activities to the Baltic countries and makes available a studio in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius. The residency will be awarded once a year for a two-month stay and is affiliated with the interdisciplinary program of RUPERT. The live-in studio is situated in a spectacular wooden building that is managed as a big studio building and stands out by its special location: In the middle of a green area close to a small beach by the Neris River, but still not far from the city center, you can immerse into the cultural center of Vilnius as well as into the natural landscape of Lithuania.

Sometimes new destinations open up for the International Residency Program at short notice — a case in point is the unique residency in the US capital city of Washington, D.C. Planned on the drawing board and situated between Maryland and Virginia, the capital is characterized by its imposing buildings as well as their important purposes. We all know the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the Pentagon – but what about the art scene in the American center of power that proclaims “Justice for all” on the city’s seal? Away Art Residencies allows artists to get first-hand exposure to the art scene of the Capital Region on Anacostia River and to study its structures and special features on site.

Huge halls and a maze of rooms opened up behind the walls of a former paper factory that had been converted into CCI Fabrika, The Center for Creative Industries in 2005. In addition to residency studios and exhibition areas for fine arts, there were event spaces for dance, performance, theatre, film and music. Situated at the edge of the historical city center, the institution served as a platform for contemporary art, promoted international exchange and had become a hotspot for exciting productions – hence, Fabrika provided the location and program for the two-floor live-in studio of the BMKOES. To explore the city, you just had to take the metro – it operates at minute intervals, has impressive stations and allows you to discover the megacity easily. It only took 30 minutes from the residency studio to the Red Square and, moving away from the center, around 15 minutes to the vast Sokolniki Park (Moscow’s “green Prater”).

The Banff residency was the epitome of working in seclusion. The modern architecture of the Banff Centre is set in the middle of the picture-perfect idyll of the Rocky Mountains and the Bow River. Since 1993, it has offered residencies to creative people from all over the world – nowadays several thousand per year. A few studios are located at the Leighton Artists’ Colony in the middle of the national park (nine wooden houses designed by Canadian architects to meet the needs of different art forms). This residency was exclusively reserved for media artists. Applicants had to propose a specific project. A jury of the BMKOES submitted a short list to the partner organization, while specific places were awarded by the Banff Centre. The BMKOES ended this cooperation due to a re-orientation of the Banff Centre in 2022.

Yogyakarta used to be the most remote destination in the International Residency Program of the BMKOES for a long time – the capital of the eponymous sultanate is as far as 11,000 km away from Austria. Amidst the island paradise, the university city located at Java’s southern coast surprised with the densest arts and culture scene of Indonesia (and maybe even of Southeast Asia as a whole): Historic temples, the spiritual and courtly culture of Java as well as Mount Merapi, a volcano shrouded in myth, are among the tourism highlights of the region. Working at this far-away destination needed to be prepared well: Mosquito nets and a fully charged mobile phone were indispensable for coping with everyday life. High humidity and steep return transport costs were an important factor influencing the selection of working materials. The geckos living in the garden frequently paid visits to the studio that was discontinued in 2019.

The BMKOES describes its residency studio in Tokyo as a tranquil oasis with good public transport connections to the center. The district where it is located is Arakawa which coincidentally has a twinning agreement with Vienna’s Donaustadt district and is characterized by residential buildings and educational institutions. Tokyo, as a metropolitan region with Yokohama and its 38 million inhabitants, is still the largest city in the world, never stands still and overwhelms visitors with a motley mix of manga hype, business mania and thousands of years of art history. Where can you find the art highlights in Tokyo and can you avoid getting “lost in translation”?

La Residence is the name of the skyscraper situated in the hip Jing’an quarter that houses the live-in studio that is made available to two artists once a year (at the same time). It is linked to the program of the Shanghai Theatre Academy that can be reached on foot, organizes exchange programs with 30 countries and is considered a performing arts institution. This brings many practical advantages for the artists-in-residence – they can use the workshops, additional rooms, canteen and fitness center, borrow equipment and attend performances for free so that there are many synergies. A smartphone is an absolute must for navigating the boomtown – and also for getting up-to-date air quality data based on which the artists-in-residence should organize their work days.

The Chengdu residency, active from 2000 to 2014, was organized in cooperation with Southwest Jiaotong University and its art department (specialized in ancient printing techniques). The artists lived in a two-room apartment overlooking a lake, while the simple 15 m² studio was situated on the University’s campus. Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province located in the southwest of China and, with a population of 15 million, it is a real metropolis, but only the fourth biggest city of the huge country. The – at times, strong – presence of the International Residency Program in China can be explained by the committed efforts of a Chinese university professor staying in Vienna to intensify cultural exchange between China and Austria.

In cooperation with the international studio program of the Egon Schiele Art Centrum, a residency place was provided in Český Krumlov from 1995 to 2017. In artistic terms, Český Krumlov is not a hotspot – it was selected as a place that permits focused work in a quiet environment. Remote from pervasive distractions in everyday life, the tower-like building with its 9 m tall studio room located on the banks of the Vltava river offers seclusion, tranquility and a lot of “upwards potential”. Up to the 1940s, beer was brewed in the building complex. The proximity to Vienna, however, meant that the residency was not always used as a real timeout.

The live-in duplex studio located in London is very British: In a Victorian townhouse with a small garden that was acquired by the then Economic Ministry in 1993 and made available to the BMKOES for its International Residency Program, artists find tranquility and particularly beautiful light. The Bow neighborhood that forms part of the Borough of Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, is a traditional workers’ district and has a twinning partnership with Mödling. London re-invents itself in another corner every day. With its wealth of galleries, museums, the influential Frieze Art Fair and an active scene, the British metropolis can hold its ground as an art hotspot to date. Hence, there is more than enough to be discovered – apart from the arts, this applies to an unfamiliar sense of time and distance as well as an elaborate waste separation system at the studio (you stuff paper, glass, plastic and metal in pink waste bags on Tuesdays and the rest in black ones for collection on Thursdays).

In the middle of Kreuzberg, between Oranienstrasse and Kottbusser Tor, the BMKOES rented a studio in a four-story Berlin townhouse from 1994 to 1997 whose rear building now accommodates the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum focusing on urban history. The single studio was linked to the grant program of Künstlerhaus Bethanien in organizational terms. Based in the former “Central Deaconess Institute and Hospital Bethanien” (Central-Diakonissenanstalt und Krankenhaus Bethanien) at Mariannenplatz from 1974 to 2010 (today at Kottbusser Strasse), the Berlin Wall was situated directly behind the Künstlerhaus until 1989. The artists lived in an area that re-invented itself in the 1990s and nowadays is shaped by multiculturalism. For each Austrian artist, Künstlerhaus Bethanien organized an exhibition plus publication. With a twelve-month term, the Berlin studio – along with New York – was among the residencies of the BMKOES that offered the longest stays. In 1997 it was discontinued due to changes in the program of the cooperation partner.

The P.S.1 International Studio Program, founded by Alanna Heiss in 1976 and housed in the impressive Clocktower building in Lower Manhattan, probably was the most popular studio. After Austria-wide calls and the short-listing of ten artists by a national jury, the residency was awarded by P.S.1 that preferred edgy positions. Together with 14 international artists-in-residence, the Austrian artists had a full year for pursuing their own work and exhibiting, exchanging ideas and exploring New York’s art world. They were accommodated at 72–74 East, 3rd Street, art. 6B in the East Village until 1999 and then at 523 Hudson Street, alt. 1RS in Greenwich Village. Cooperation ended in 2004 when P.S.1 fundamentally changed its program.

At the address 810 Broadway in Greenwich Village, the BMKOES offered an independent live-in studio from 1991 to 1997. The 70 m² loft on the seventh floor exactly lived up to what you expect from a cool location in New York, so the artists said: large, open, flooded by light and a marvelous view across the roofs of the surrounding buildings (it was even possible to conquer some of them on fire ladders) with a huge studio wall in the back. Many artists had set up their studios between Grace Church and Union Square – thus, the artists-in-residence were right in the middle of all the action, not only in geographical terms. Attitudes were as open as the studio itself at that time: There were lively exchanges and sometimes continual comings and goings.

The Prague studio was established in 1990, directly after the Velvet Revolution (November to December 1989) and the removal of the barriers along the borders, the so-called Iron Curtain, that sealed the 453 km long border between the former Austrian and Czech crown lands from 1951 on. At a distance of just 300 km from Vienna, Prague was a fairly white spot in collective memory during those times. The studio served to discover the local arts scene and a country that was rather foreign to us in spite of its geographical and historical proximity. The live-in studio was located in a block with a green courtyard in Pohořelec at the edge of the historical castle district, between an impressive loop of busy Ulica Patočkova and the famous Strahov Monastery.

The Rome studio was the first in a series of international residency destinations that were to come from 1985 on. Rome is not a center of contemporary art. Owing to its rich history, its wealth of historical buildings and museums, the example set by the German Academy at Villa Massimo and as a classic destination of the Grand Tour, however, Rome was more than predestined to be the first-choice location. Moreover, good contacts to the Austrian Cultural Forum facilitated organizational arrangements. At famous Piazza Navona, the shared studio (used together with photo and literature grant beneficiaries) was based in a historical townhouse for 33 years. It was noisy and sometimes overcrowded – both indoors and outdoors –, which was the main reason for closing the pioneer studio in 2017.