2024 | Urban Exchange Residency | Detroit

04/01/24 - 04/30/24

Where Else (From Here To There), Urban Exchange Fellow: Kansas City, Craig Deppen Auge (2021). Photo: Jesse Hoyle

INDEX

CONTEXT | RESIDENCIES OVERVIEW|FEES & FUNDING | EXPECTATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES | ELIGIBILITY | FACILITIES & SERVICES | ACCOMMODATIONS | PRODUCTION RESOURCES | FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS | TESTIMONIALS

Applications deadline 12/31/23 at 11:59PM EST.

Our free application requires having or creating a Gmail account, written responses to questions, and uploading of a PDF (CV, references, work samples).


We recommend reviewing the full sample application here before applying.

If you have any trouble with the application, you may use the sample application above to gather the required information and documents - email to residency@goelsewhere.org.

A Love to Last 13 Hours by Urban Exchange Fellow: Miami, Pioneer Winter (‘16). Photo: Gui Portel

The Exchange Residency explores emerging local ecologies of contemporary art production in key, national metropolises. For 2024, we look to Detroit.

This residency serves as an incubator for collaborative creation and critical artwork while building networks among a regional common field of alternative artists and arts organizations. Elsewhere seeks creatives with compelling, critical, socially engaged work and a commitment to Detroit, who demonstrate conceptual and aesthetic experimentation. Exchange Residents receive full funding to attend the month-long residency, including room and board in the historic museum, travel support, plus a $1000 honorarium. Exchange Residents are specially featured in the press, public events, and exhibitions.

For this session, applicants eligible for this residency are required to fill out a program specific application. The Exchange Residency is strengthened through nominations from professional artists, curators, collectors, and university educators, but anyone eligible can apply. Once accepted, Exchange Residents are required to sign a contract and participate in the full-month residency.

Context

Elsewhere is a living museum, international artist residency, and collaborative learning laboratory built from Sylvia Gray’s three-story thrift store and her 58-year collection of material culture and surplus.

Elsewhere’s mission is to support site-specific experimentation, social action, and interdisciplinary collaboration in order to foster new ways of thinking and doing, the exploration of context and place in artistic creation, and the integration of creativity and life. Our vision, “with people and things, we build collaborative futures,” is both practical and utopian, believing that everything we do through Elsewhere is creating the futures we need.

We are situated in the center of downtown Greensboro, North Carolina, surrounded by restaurants, shops, venues, and other organizations, and in close proximity to historically under-resourced and redlined neighborhoods.

Right up the street is the International Civil Rights Museum that commemorates the Greensboro Four who started the sit-ins in the 1960’s and have ourselves been a critical site for supporting contemporary movement work of Black Lives Matter, Queer People of Color Collective, and other groups. Greensboro was at one time an international hub for the textile industry and is in recent decades hosting growing immigrant communities. The city was founded by Quakers and boasts 5 universities and colleges, including A&T, the largest HBCU in the country, and Bennett College, a small Black liberal arts college for women. We have partnered with nearby downtown arts magnet high school Weaver Academy and Experiential School, who uses downtown as their campus. Our proprietress, Sylvia Gray, was a founding member of the local synagogue and regularly fed groups of Guilford College students when she came home from the shop.

Residencies Overview

“One of the most unique residency experiences in the country.” - Andy Warhol Foundation

Annually, 30-35 residents are selected to collectively live and work within Elsewhere to create projects that activate the Living Museum. Work produced is site-specific and responsive, exploring Elsewhere’s environment, material inventories, cultural histories, social systems, neighborhood communities, and past projects. All objects and artworks remain part of the museum, available for continued transformation by future creatives.

Residents receive room & board, material, tool, and equipment access, as well as, public engagement and programming opportunities, documentation, promotion, online and in-museum representation of work.

Elsewhere’s environment is highly stimulating, conceptual, and social. The Museum hosts an incredible density of materials and continuous public activity. Composed by layers of artworks and objects, there are no white walls, blank spaces, or separate studios. Everything is interpreted contextually and in situ. Artists-in-residence respond to a collection of artworks and materials to make visible their conceptual, material, and social visions. Projects engage Elsewhere’s Museum as a platform for creative, performative, research-based, and curatorial experimentation. The century-old inventory of objects form a natural resource, archive, and set of incredible things, available for thoughtful and site-specific transformation.

The Museum is both a public space and home. Residents live in the 2nd floor artist-built boarding house or at our off-site, accessible housing. The kitchen is centrally featured in the museum's 1st floor and showcases Elsewhere’s organized, cooperative, living practices to visitors.

Elsewhere is an unparalleled site for creative inquiry, join in the experiment of building new futures from old things!

This fellowship program fosters exchange between Elsewhere and emerging ecologies of contemporary art production in major cities across the United States. Past cities include Chicago (2015, Museum as Instrument, curated by Shannon Stratton and Joe Jeffers), 2016 Miami (2016), Baltimore (2017), Philadelphia (2019), and Kansas City (2021) and New Orleans (2022).

Fees & Funding

This residency serves as an incubator for collaborative creation and critical artwork while building networks among a regional common field of alternative artists and arts organizations. Elsewhere seeks creatives with compelling, critical, socially engaged work and a commitment to Kansas City who demonstrate conceptual and aesthetic experimentation. Exchange Residents receive full funding to attend the month-long residency, including room and board in the historic museum, with additional travel support, plus a $1000 honorarium. Exchange Residents are specially featured in the press, public events, and exhibitions.

Expectations & Opportunities

All invited residents sign a contract that includes artwork agreement, residency agreement, liability release, media release, equipment loan agreement, fellow payment agreement, residency invoice, contact form, and The Forge waiver/agreement/policy. Included is our equity agreement and community guidelines, which give you a sense of the culture we strive to maintain.

Eligibility

Participants must be 18 years old or older.

Elsewhere shares a radically expansive understanding of creative practice and identity, and we strive for different representations of voices, life experiences, views, and interests to reflect the collaborative community we have and wish to serve.

Who make great Elsewhere residents?

  • Makers, doers, and thinkers of all kinds.

  • who work across media (i.e. installation, performance, video, sound, food) and fields (i.e. art, healthcare, administration, coding, journalism, education, curation, homesteading, design, writing, science)…

  • and are interested in co-creation, reuse, public practice, social engagement, intersectional critique, urban intervention, collective and experimental living.

  • Collectives and collaborative groups, international artists, and off-site commuter residents are all welcome.

Facilties & Services

Elsewhere bedroom. Photo: Thea Cohen

Accommodations

We strive to create accommodations that ensure residents’ ability to participate and be successful in the residency.

While still a relatively rustic environment, we added heating and air conditioning HVAC system, safety egress, fire monitoring and alarm system, sprinklers, and emergency exits in 2016. We also made the 1st floor fully ADA accessible and all bathrooms single-stall and gender neutral.

Each resident or collective gets a private bedroom with a shared bath in our artist-converted 2nd floor boarding house.

Access to free on-site washer and dryer.

We operate a vegetarian food coop in our artist-created Kitchen Commons, with grocery requests and orders completed weekly. We utilize produce from our garden and local food surplus whenever possible. Residents have 24/7 access to the kitchen, which has two ovens and loads of gear.

Residents are welcome to have guests. We will ask that they contribute to food costs if they eat with us and overnight guests must be approved ahead of time and pay a small nightly rental fee. Guest are limited to a 4 night stay, with some flexibility.

Significant others and/or collaborators who would be joining residents must be included in the original application.

Trained service animals are welcome, provided official documentation.

Elsewhere’s Kitchen Commons

Production Resources

ON-SITE EQUIPMENT + MATERIALS ACCESS

  • Studios: woodworking, textiles, tech lab , printmaking, storefront theater, vintage wardrobe, garden, and public kitchen inside the 120-year-old building. Tools and equipment list.

  • Materials: Residents have access to the vast vintage material resources dating back to the early 20th century. enormous collection of textiles, toys, books, consumer technologies, clothes, bric-a-brac, and general thrift for transformation.

  • A small budget for materials necessary for artistic production - as Elsewhere is an experiment in post consumption, we prioritize using what is at hand.

FORGE MAKER SPACE

  • All residents gain 24-hour access to neighboring maker space, The Forge Greensboro, after completing a 1-hour orientation. Additional orientations are required for certain equipment.

  • 3D printers, laser cutters, CnC router, ceramics and welding facilities through Elsewhere’s organizational membership with neighboring maker space. Tools and equipment list.

  • Check out past resident projects that utilized The Forge (note: this page is in development).

PRODUCTION SUPPORT

  • Elsewhere’s curatorial team stewards the creative process and collection use provides critical feedback, supports public events, and facilitates connections with Greensboro neighbors and our international network. 

  • Documentation, promotion, press, and social media support. See examples here.

  • Presentation of your projects through the museum and permanently on our website.

COMMUNITY ACCESS

  • By hosting five to seven residents at a time, our residencies promote a collaborative work environment for learning and experimentation among peers.

  • Elsewhere organizes visits from local, regional, and national curators and arts organizations to offer critical feedback and to expand artists’ professional networks.

  • Residents interact with the public through open studio hours, community meals, artist talks, other events, and through informal gatherings and introductions.

  • Following residencies, artists join our alumni network, E.T.C. (Elsewhere Tenured Collaborators), for continued access to the resources of our international community. Take a look at our alumni artists.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Can I participate for more than one residency this year? No

    How often can I apply to Elsewhere’s residency program? You can apply every application cycle.

    How often can I take part in Elsewhere’s residency? While you can apply every cycle, you cannot be a part of the residency more than twice in a 5 year span.

    Can I bring family/partners? Currently, residents can only have overnight visitors for a maximum of 4 nights, with a $50 a night charge to cover room and inclusion in our food coop.

    You have a vegetarian food coop, is meat allowed? Meat is allowed, but must be purchased by the resident themselves.

    Can I bring animals? Only registered service animals are allowed. You must provide us with papers to confirm their status. These animals will be solely the responsibility of their owner.

    Does Elsewhere have quiet hours? Yes. As this is a communal living situation, Elsewhere operated quiet hours from 11pm to 10am. If artists living together choose to expand these based on consensus from the entire group, this is allowed.

    Can I take my work with me? In general, no. Most work at Elsewhere makes use of the collection. Elsewhere’s general rule is that nothing new comes in and no collection leaves. That said, if your work is part of an edition, as long as a complete version stays at Elsewhere to represent you in the museum, extra editions may go with you.

    I am part of a collaborative, can I apply as a group? Every member of the collaborative who wants to apply separately.

Testimonials

“Being a resident at Elsewhere is one of the most memorable experiences I have had to date as an artist. The freedom and encouragement to play and discover new and dormant parts of my practice was invigorating and has given me inspiration, impetus, and tangible tools to continue working with long after the conclusion of the residency. As an artist-parent, the residency was very accommodating and I didn't feel judged for needing to split my time arting and parenting. Quite the contrary. The flexibility and understanding on the part of the staff made the success of my residency possible. It gave me the confidence to ask for what I need and to seek more balance as I do other artistic work. I miss being at Elsewhere these days, but the effort to keep alumni involved has eased that feeling and I am so happy to still be in orbit with the museum. I feel seen, I feel included, and I feel like I can tap into the community whenever I need, from now on.”

-Cara Hagan (‘21)

“I am an artist and art historian who has presented visual and scholarly work throughout the United States and in the U.K., Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I was a Southern Constellations Fellow at Elsewhere in February 2019. Because of my experience there, Greensboro holds a special place in the geography of the contemporary art world […] alongside such locations as Skowhegan, Maine; Marfa, Texas; Joshua Tree, California; and Yaddo, Vermont. What makes these locations so desirable is not the mere presence of notable collections (many cities have such assets), but the fostering of an environment for the creation of new work and for forging relationships with other artists. Elsewhere has done this since its beginning, built on the remarkable and unique legacy of original proprietor Sylvia Gray, and I can imagine an immense legacy to be proud of when looking back in fifty or a hundred years.”

-Josh Franco (‘19)

“Elsewhere runs a strong artist residency program, based on trust in artists and an embrace of collaboration in all its forms. The organization’s support for artists who take creative risks and build meaningful peer and community relationships through their work, aligns well with the foundation’s belief in the value of experimental practice and the importance of artistic participation in cultural and civic conversations.”

-Rachel Bers, Program Director, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts


Read this great NEA interview with Carolyn Mak (‘10) about the residency.

Visitors exploring Time Machine by resident Ali Momeni (‘12)

Mixed by Southern Constellations Fellow, Lonnie Holley (‘18). Photo: Amelia Nura.

Documentation of ASMR video production and “Slime Social” for Social Sensory Stimulation by Diana Laurel Caramat (‘19). Photo: Amelia Nura