My Castle Is Your Castle – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Our constant involvement in the production of critical design projects and our current interest in alternative economic systems, precarity and the macro- and micro-structures that help practitioners – especially in the field of design – to create critically engaged work while avoiding the constraints of the market, have led us to decide to share the slight surplus in material resources we have at the moment with other practitioners interested in creating non-commercial, critical work – this is how Brave New Alps describe the motivations standing behind one of their new projects developed during the residency stay at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.

Brave New Alps intend to set up an 'economy of support' by sharing their living and working space from May to July with 6 practitioners operating in different fields – most of them will join them on a 2-week basis.

A sculptor, a curator, an artist and three graphic designers – people who applied to an open call they sent out – will be living and working in their studio at Laboratorium, and will collaborate with them on their current projects or develop independent works.

A physical wooden temporary structure – a 'room in a room', designed by BNA in collaboration with Pawel Jasiewicz – will enable this 'sub-residency' program. At the end of July the structure will be dismantled.

This open-ended experiment will be considered as a case-study for BNA current research titled Designing Economic Cultures in the context of Bianca Elzenbaumer's current Ph.D. at the Design Department of Goldsmiths College in London.
 

• Guests invited in the frame of the ‘sub-residency’ programme My Castle is Your Castle:
  • 29/04—14/05/2011
    • Anna Sikorska (British sculptor with Polish origins based in London: www.sikorska.org) 
  • 14/05—31/05/2011
    • Yesomi Umolu (British-Nigerian curator based in London: http://on-errantry.com/)
  • 01/06—14/06/2011
    • Ray O'Meara (Irish graphic designer based in London: http://theofficeofoptimism.com/)
  • 15/06—31/06/2011
    • Steven Emmanuel (British artist based in Germany: http://www.stevenemmanuel.com/)
  • 27/06—03/07/2011
    • Dan Russell (British graphic designer based in Manchester: http://thefourthfloor.tumblr.com/)
  • 03/07—31/07/2011
    • Courtney Inge (American graphic designer based in Austin: http://www.courtneyinge.net/)

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• Brave New Alps
  • Collaborating under the collective name Brave New Alps, Bianca Elzenbaumer and Fabio Franz are communication designers who investigate into the cultural value of design and its capacity to question our surrounding realities. Brave New Alps' practice is focused upon developing a careful and exact evaluation of the cultural conditions surrounding a given project. By inhabiting the specific time and place of a project, and gaining insight from a variety of different subject specialists Brave New Alps develop an in-depth analysis of the given project's social, political, physical and economic condition. Their resulting design process aims at creating a situation or an object, which actively suggests, and promotes a change in modes of thinking about, and operating within the identified conditions. www.brave-new-alps.com/