SomoS Berlin Virtual Artist Residency

SomoS Berlin Virtual Artist Residency is an empowering 3-month online experience that seeks to positively accompany the participating artist’s work progress, providing input, mentoring, support and visibility while creating a stimulating and friendly professional community. The online residency is a dedicated productive joint process that will help the artist to focus on their strengths.

The SomoS Virtual Artist Residency aims to provide its participating artists with the same level of support, visibility, constructive critique, collegial input, professional focus, cultural exchange, and networking opportunities as a physical residency at SomoS would, all within the framework of an intimate, friendly, and respectful cosmopolitan online community.

The inclusive program is designed to be useful to artists of any age, nationality, background, and experience, as long as they can commit and have established a professional creative practice in some form or another.

Some artists take part supplementing a later physical artist residency, while others take part in the online residency as a stimulating standalone experience, both finding fresh inspiration, focus, and support. It is also a great tool to develop a convincing application portfolio, open your studio to international art professionals to receive honest critiques, or experience personal empathetic mentoring – Like our physical residencies, because of its limited size, our virtual residency offers a tailor-made experience designed with your practice and needs in mind.

While the Virtual Artist Residency is an online experience, it is still infused with a localized sense of the Berlin art scene and of SomoS’ curatorial focus. This is done by integrating Berlin-based art professionals such as artists, critics, gallerists, writers, curators, while building upon the existing theme complex of SomoS’ exhibitions and art projects, dedicated to dialogue, challenging assumptions, and representing diverse standpoints.

The participation in SomoS Virtual Artist Residency includes:

• Regular live group video conferences, moderated by distinguished art professionals, focused on work discussion and exchange
• Weekly individual curatorial support with SomoS staff per video call, consisting of video interview sessions, discussing the work progress, dissemination etc.
• Weekly individual studio visits by experienced art professionals (artists, critics, gallerists, writers, curators) by video call
• Monthly joint virtual visits to galleries or established artist studios.
• Artist video interviews. Made in close cooperation with the artist, these include online interviews and footage of the artist’s work and environment, to be disseminated online
• Original high-quality writing about your art, indefinitely documented on SomoS website
• Social media PR campaigns for each artist, on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and newsletter
• Continuous access to the rooms of SomoS’ encrypted private text/voice/video chat server
• All sessions are live, no prefab content involved
• A certificate of participation

The Virtual Artist Residency has a duration of minimally 3 months, beginning on a rolling basis at the start of the month. It takes place in English and requires a good internet connection, and headset.

Moderators, Studio Visitors & Curators

An overview of some of the experienced art professionals weekly engaging one-on-one with the participants of the Virtual AIR. SomoS is eager to provide participants with meaningful and productive connections, therefore we offer a choice to either have regular support by one or two professionals from our pool, or have a broad range of weekly encounters.

Teoma Naccarato

Teoma Naccarato holds a PhD from the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University. She has been collaborating with John MacCallum since they met in 2013. Their collective work draws on their backgrounds in choreography, music composition, computer science, and creative writing, as well as their deep interest in performance art and philosophy. Their durational hybrid performance installations mediate on bodies and identities within techno-cultures. Their work has been presented in theaters, galleries, and film festivals internationally.

Heyd Fontenot

American visual artist, filmmaker and curator Heyd Fontenot (1963) is known for his intricately detailed drawings, installations, and films. His art explores the body and human vulnerability with a compelling balance of sensitivity and candidness.
Read more about Heyd Fontenot

Nicole Beck

Nicole Beck is a curator organizer raised in Hong Kong and educated in Sydney, where she earned a Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership at the University of New South Wales, developing an understanding of her curatorial work as a means to investigate and reflect. She has co-curated exhibitions and events focusing on bringing together multidisciplinary artists to elaborate on subjects like community, care, and creativity. She’s also curated events presenting Sydney’s rich electronic music scene and a recurring party celebrating queer and PC music culture.
Read more about Nicole Beck

Daisy Nikoloska

Daisy is a Berlin-based writer and scholar who integrates theory with musings about art and popular culture. She graduated with a first-class honors degree in Art History, Visual Culture and English from the University of Exeter in 2019 and is currently working towards a Master’s Degree in Anglophone Modernities: Literature and Culture at the University of Potsdam. Known for her all-consuming obsession with Cyborgism, her work ranges from poetry and essay writing to online memes using both analog and digital media. Using the alias “Hitachi Blonde,” Nikoloska maintains her ambivalent relationship with technology online, creating techno-memes on Instagram under the popular account @cyborg.asm.

Ari Versluis (Studio Exactitudes)

Dutch photographer Ari Versluis acclaimed for his Exactitudes conceptual photo series, made in collaboration with Ellie Uyttenbroek, that examines the construction of social identity by way of fashion codes. He is also known for his solo work and commissions. Ari Versluis has showcased his work extensively worldwide. Notable exhibition venues include Centro Centro Madrid, BOZAR Brussels, Art Basel Miami, Tate Modern London, National Gallery of Kosovo, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Biennale di Architettura 2012 Venice, Musée d’Art Contemporain Marseille, 21_21 Design Sight Tokyo, Toledo Museum of Art Ohio, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. His works are part of prestigious collections such as Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, FNAC Collection Paris, and Mudam Collection Luxembourg and many more. Versluis has also delivered lectures at institutions like The Photographers Gallery London, Design Academy Eindhoven, Tate Modern London. Ari Versluis currently educates BA/MA Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
Read more about Ari Versluis

Oliver Dougherty

Oliver Dougherty is a Berlin-based Australian curator and artist, whose work builds from the idea that human and non-human life are composed in a collaborative ecosystem. From this assumption, Dougherty’s curatorial work moves between the realms of the virtual and ecological, contemplating the precarious position of humanity on the planet through queer-feminist approaches. Dougherty received his MA in Spatial Strategies from the Weissensee Academy of ArtsBerlin. He currently works at Spätikapitalismus art space in Berlin, where he organized the Artist-at-Risk program for queer Ukraine refugee artists. In his former role as a team member of SomoS, Oliver curated the acclaimed group exhibition on queer-feminist futurism, Futureless.