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.

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.