Program that supports migrant cultural production
kültüř gemma! offers scholarships and fellowships
Ever since 2013 kültüř gemma ! has been supporting the artistic and cultural work of migrants, as well as furthering the critical discourse on the relationship between art and culture and migration. As well as granting four one-year scholarships kültür gemma! offers three fellowships at established Viennese cultural institutions. One of kültüř gemma!´s main goals is to promote migrant positions in the discourses and practices of the art field.
Thinking beyond simple identity politics we consider migrant subjectivities, related to realities and regimes of migration, relevant. And we try to work consequently against the notorious devaluation of migrant knowledge and the structural and systematic discrimination, being taken seriously.
However, kültüř gemma! takes a critical position on the practices of cultural appropriation and exploitation of migrant “capital” labelled “diversity”. We have deliberately chosen this paradoxical position and intends to show the powerful, yet not always just, relationships in the cultural field in order to open them up towards the possibility of change.
SCHOLARSHIPS
kültüř gemma! offers four 6-month working scholarships endowed with 1300 Euros on a monthly basis. The scholarship should help the respective artists to realize the project with which they applied for the scholarship, as well as support them to establish themselves in the cultural scene in Vienna. The scholarship holders are accompanied by kültüř gemma! throughout the year.
All the works are then presented at the end of the year in a collective exhibition/performance. These presentations have taken place in institutions such as the brut, the pinacoteca, the WUK, the Schneiderei, or the Tanzquartier in Vienna.
FELLOWSHIPS
kültüř gemma! also offer three fellowships at cultural institutions in Vienna, these last for a time span of 6 months. The aim of the fellowship (endowed with 1300 € on a monthly basis) is to enable a professional collaboration within a specific field, as well as dealing with a specific cultural institution from a migrant perspective. Holders of the fellowship have worked with institutions such as the Secession, the Stadtkino, the Viennese Libraries, as well as the brunnenpassage or the Burgtheater.
MIGRANT
This is a call for applications directed decidedly towards migrants without specification of country of origin, nationality, or anything similar. Anyone working in the cultural field who understands themselves as migrant, black, or person of colour, and is therefore not in the position of privilege held by the majority. kültüř gemma! understands the term migrant as a political term, and as a self-definition for a productive “oppositional standpoint” within this society.
JURY
The jury consists of a variety of experts from the cultural field, that are active and highly successful in various different areas, and deal with the topic of migration in a theoretical as well as practical manner, without being solely defined by it. Former jury members are Yasmina Haddad (photographer), Asli Kilal (theater-maker), Nina Kusturica (filmmaker), Maja Osojnik (musician, singer), Mara Mattuschka (filmmaker), Ascan Breuer (filmmaker), Anne Wiederhold (cultural manager and curator), Ruth Sonderegger (professor at the academy of fine arts in Vienna), or Roberta Lima (artist) among many others.