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From the Amazon to Australia to the Arctic, the forest fire has become the most visible spectacle of the climate crisis. Burning trees are both a cause and a consequence of climate change; they sit at the centre of spiralling processes of destruction, and the sight sparks both despair and denial.

In the face of this crisis, the living forest is still a site of hope. Trees are a planet-spanning work of natural art; from the bright intricacy of a maple leaf, to the kaleidoscopic diversity of a rainforest. Today, like art, they are essential to imagining breathable futures. The forest is the landscape of our deep past; it provokes dreams of a wilder world to come, a restoration of our species’ place within nature. The forest is a futuristic technology, capable of regenerative processes, communicative networks, and carbon-capture feats that our own inventions are yet to rival. And the forest is an intimate everyday habitat, providing shade, shelter and sustenance to those who know how to live and work with it.

But the forest also provokes human discomforts and anxieties. It is a place of abundant decay, where life and death intermingle. Of creatures we have never encountered, let alone named; of fears encoded into our darkest fairy tales. Its vast network of branches and roots connects the heavens with the underworld, the sky with the soil, dissolving the barriers between mammals, insects, plants, fungi, bacteria. And the forest disrupts our sense of chronology: a tree lives at a different pace to a person or a political system, forcing us to think at different timescales.

Send us a proposal that engages the inspiring or the unsettling aspects of forests; that take trees as ideas or as materials; that turn to past, present, or future and imagine new habitats into existence. Can art represent a tree’s experience, or can an artist collaborate with a forest? If the tree is key to living in symbiosis, how might we begin to learn its language?

text by Shona McCombes

APPLICATION CLOSED

The modern globe is constantly getting smaller. People fly enormous distances daily, buy products at the click of a button, and eat food grown in faraway climates. There is a constant flow of money and information around the world, day and night, faster and vaster than we can comprehend.  The cities we live in are becoming super-diverse, with a multitude of cultures and lifestyles coexisting in close proximity. Here in Amsterdam, where people come from across the globe to visit, live and work, you can hear countless languages when you walk down the street. In this urban space, identities are always mingling and mutating. But we all come from somewhere, and the landscapes we live in and travel through shape who we are. We believe that we are our landscape, and we invite work that explores the influence of landscape on identity, heritage, difference and coexistence. Our physical environment, the way our ancestors confronted, shaped, and adapted to their natural surroundings, frames the development of our cultural, communal identities. And perhaps our personal identities, too, are framed by our personal experiences of the landscapes we grow up with and those we choose to settle in. We want you to tell us about your landscape: describe its beauty, turn its long-kept secrets into poetry, fantasize and design its future, make sculptures that express its shape or sound compositions that give it a voice. We can’t wait to meet you and learn about the landscapes you bring with you!

APPLICATION CLOSED

Almost 375 years ago, the water of the Starnmeer was pumped away by windmills and the lakebecame land. The Dutch tradition of taking control over nature in order to gain fertile agricultural lands feels very natural to its citizens. Today, the people have forgotten about the dynamics of the land and take their safety for granted. But recent insights on the climate-change and the potential for flooding, taking ‘dry feet’ for granted. With the natural disasters ever increassingly reported on the news we might have to question our perceptions! Foreign perspectives allow for new and refreshing observations.We invite you to write a proposal on the liaison of culture and nature, with the Starnmeerpolder as a starting point of your project. This could be approached from different disciplines such as architecture, visual arts, philosophy, design, music, ecology and the sciences, amongst others

APPLICATION CLOSED

Almost 375 years ago, the water of the Starnmeer was pumped away by windmills and the lake became land. The Dutch tradition of taking control over the natural powers in order to gain fertile agricultural lands feels very natural to it’s citizens. They forgot about the dynamics of the land and take their safety for granted, with the growing knowledge of climatechange and natural disasters on the news the situation is becoming less comforting. Foreign perspective allows for new and refreshing observations! We invite you to write a proposal on the liason of culture and nature, with the Starnmeerpolder as the starting point of your project.

Cultureland strives for an earth where everybody finds beauty and consolation. Cultureland believes a good residency is a period in which there is time for research, reflection and refinement. Cultureland is looking for projects about the relationship between culture and nature. Therefore we offer a residency period in which you stay at an urban as well as a rural location. Cultureland invites you to retreat.

The Cultureland Artist in Residency program starts in Amsterdam, where the artist or researcher can explore the cultural and scientific life that the city has to offer. We organize a kick-off meeting with the artist to meet other professionals and to start a conversation about the project. The residency period takes 10 weeks in total. During the first 2 weeks, the artist will stay at the Amsterdam Studio. After this introduction, the artist retires for a production period at a rural location called Buitenwerkplaats in the Starnmeer for 6 weeks. Buitenwerkplaats is surrounded by typical Dutch polder landscape. In the studio there is room to produce and reflect on the project. Halfway the residency the artist presents work in progress in the Storefront 181, a former shop on the Admiraal de Ruijterweg 181.  Finally, the artist returns to Amsterdam to finalize the residency for another 2 weeks. The residency is finalized by an “artist talk”, the proces and produce of the residency are displays to reflect on the findings.

Our Storefront at Admiraal de Ruijterweg 181 is available to display about the artist and their residence project. This storefront is a former shopwindow on the public street with a cross-section of Amsterdam residents that pass-by every day. The measurements of the storefront are approximately 1.85 m high and 2.4 m wide on each side of the front-door. The depth of the storefront-space is 0.6 m.

The Buitenwerkplaats studio is located in a rural area in the Starnmeer. Buitenwerkplaats is surrounded by typical Dutch polder landscape.