Open call: (A)WAKE residency program 2026

Under the title ‘Do you remember?’, this year’s edition of New Radicalisms questions the social, cultural and political tendencies of retreating into nostalgia. In current times of overwhelming complexity and entangled injustice, people seem to be diving into the past either as a way to romanticise a reductive vision of times where “things were simpler”, or to resurface suppressed indigenous practices and disrupted potentialities to counter the erasure of a pluralistic future. For this residency program, we invite (multi-disciplinary) artists who work along this spectrum and are interested to explore nostalgia through an archival search in the facilities of Beeld & Geluid in Hilversum. 

The Beeld & Geluid collection contains more than a million hours of historical audio-visual materials, focusing on Dutch media culture in its many forms, spanning from radio, television, film, music and digital media.

Inspired by Munir Fasheh who visited us last year, we envision this residency period in the form of mujaawarah. Inadequately translated into English as ‘neighbouring’, mujaawarah مجاورة enables a way of learning where knowledge emerges through co-presence, story-sharing and mutual support. 

Questioning the role of nostalgia throughout recent history as well as in our daily lives, we are interested to provide a generative space to revisit the personal memories and ancestral practices that were once deemed retrograde in order to accelerate an ecocidal imperialist and capitalist vision. We are committed to support artistic research into how nostalgia is manufactured on a macro political level and utilised to propel conservative nativist melancholia for an idealised past that most likely was never even there. This is echoed among fascist ideologies, evident in slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’ and more locally, ‘Een Nederland dat weer van ons is’.

The residency program takes place from 27 August until 27 September 2026, with additional few days before and after dedicated for grounding and reflection. The selected artists will be provided (shared) accommodation in Rotterdam for this duration, in addition to a fee of 2000,- euros (excl. VAT), as well as transportation and production costs up to 1500,- euros. The residency program is open for artists living in The Netherlands with cultural roots in West Asia and North Africa. In partnership with CBK Rotterdam, one residency position will be granted to a Rotterdam-based artist. The resident artists will be selected by a jury committee with members from (A)WAKE team and Beeld en Geluid researchers.

The application period is open until 28 June, with the following important dates to keep in check:

28 June: Application deadline (23:59 CET)
3 July: Announcement of selected artists
Mid July: (Online) meet-up with selected artists 
27 August: Start of the residency program
25 – 27 September: Presenting work (in progress) during New Radicalisms biennial
29 September: Reflections and future wishes

Candidate profile

• Early to mid-career multidisciplinary artist, living in Rotterdam and/or in The Netherlands, from or having cultural roots in WANA.

• Your work emerges from political urgency and critical inquiry, embedded in audio/visual practices, sound and sonic research, media art and technological experimentation, critical and artistic research, socially engaged and collective practices, performance-based research, or hybrid formats.

• Your research and practice engages with archives, collective memory, and suppressed indigenous practices. Especially welcoming those who bring their own archives and (un)freezed histories and like to interact with the Dutch media landscape, either to enrich it, to challenge it, or shake things up.