Artist Residency Program
Since 1999, the ESS Artist Residency Program has facilitated the creation of 40 new works involving the exploration of sound. Audio art, experimental music, installation, cinema, performing arts, and radio art have all been represented in the roster of former ARP recipients.
ARP 2009
Due to current financial strains in the cultural community, including funding cutbacks and delays, ESS is under pressure to severely limit its programs. However, in the spirit of “avanti popolo,” we will offer our traditional Artist Residency Program, but with important modifications for 2009. Although it is not feasible for us to offer residencies at no cost to recipient artists this year — as we have since 1999 – we instead are offering three residencies that provide studio access at radically subsidized rates. Please note that we intend to make this change FOR THIS YEAR ONLY, and to go back to a fully-funded version of the ARP in 2010.
The offer:
Through the 2009 Artist Residency Program, ESS is offering three residencies to Chicago area artists for new projects, 15 to 30 hours each, providing access to the ESS recording facilities with engineering assistance. Applications can come from individuals, collaborators, or ensembles. Individual applicants must live in Chicago or in a 25-mile radius of the city; collaborators or ensemble members do not all have to fit this criterion, but the lead or contact artist in a group must. Recipients of 2007 or 2008 ARP residencies are ineligible; full-time students are ineligible (meaning: if you are enrolled in a full-time degree program anytime in 2009, you are not eligible). Staff, board members, and current contract employees of ESS are not eligible.
The modification:
Instead of receiving the residency absolutely free, each recipient artist pays $15 per hour, with the remainder subsidized by ESS. So, for example, if you receive a residency and use 20 hours of studio time, you will need to pay $300, and ESS absorbs the remaining $600 in costs (plus administration and overhead). This fee helps us cover the cost of the engineer/facilitator — all other costs are covered by ESS. The typical individual studio use rate at ESS is $45 per hour, so the ARP amounts to a 67% subsidy for your project. The fee will be due at the conclusion of your residency.
The categories:
1. Sound artists: Music, sound art, radio art, sound poetry, or any other sonic art projects that require recording studio access and take an exploratory approach to the recording process. Projects oriented towards an innovative use of the recording studio and its related technologies will receive priority. Projects that use the recording studio as a simple “means to an end” — for example, recording music for a CD — would not receive priority. Projects must be completed before December 21, 2009.
2. Non-sound artists: Projects by artists with little or no background in sound, but with a sophisticated artistic practice, who wish to incorporate or further their explorations of integrating sound into their work. This could include installation artists, visual artists, performance artists, choreographers, etc. If selected, we will provide someone to work with you who will act not only as a recording engineer, but also as a consultant to provide aesthetic and conceptual input on the potentials of sound for your project. Projects must be completed before December 21, 2009.
3. Audio post-production for cinema: Independent film- and video-makers who want assistance with sound design, soundtrack editing and mixing, ADR, and any other aspects of audio post-production for film or video. Projects can be in any category of cinema –narrative, experimental, documentary, short, long, etc. If your project cannot be completed in 30 hours, you may apply anyway and use the residency as a partial subsidy to initiate the project. However, if you decide to complete the project at ESS, please note that you will be charged the normal hourly rate for the balance of time spent. This will be established at the outset of the residency. The residency portion of the project must be completed before December 21, 2009, even if the total project’s completion date is later.
Our intention is to offer one residency in each of these three categories; however, artistic quality and innovation are the fundamental criteria, so we reserve the right to distribute the residencies by merit as determined in the ears and eyes of the review panel. In the past we have given residencies to composers with 30-year careers, emerging intermedia artists, filmmakers with limited experience in one-track mono audio, visual artists with no sound experience at all, and everyone in between, so we are quite perceptive in our assessments of applicants and very dedicated to artistic diversity.
Click here to view the list of current and past recipients.
Click here for application guidelines.
Crosscut
ESS and Links Hall regret that the Crosscut program is currently on hiatus.
Please check this website late 2009/early 2010 for an update on future Calls
for Proposals.
Click here to view previous recipients.
Click here to visit Links Hall.
Other opportunities
CAAP Grants, IAC Special Assistance, IAC Artist Fellowship, CAR, Links Hall
