In this pandemic year, with travel on hold for everyone's safety, our residency in our departed co-founder Crystal's honor is transforming into an online fellowship and distributed residency around the theme Mediated. For the seventh edition of the Crystal Ruth Bell Residency, we are inviting people who work with all kinds of media to apply for a fully-funded, 6 month remote residency in 2021.
Until we can meet again in person without endangering one another, we stay close thanks to the mediums that connect us. Video chats and voice notes allow us to meet in the middle, face to screens to face. The best dance parties in the cloud. Our revived love for phone calls and postcards is sometimes the only way to sincerely convey our condolences, our fears, our hopes. Our bottomless obsession with content, livestreams, retrospectives, and app-triggered dopamine feedback loops keep us hooked to our devices. We'll never finish scrolling but maybe some of us have time to sort through our archives, grieving those we've lost and the memories we can't recreate, at least anytime soon. Maybe we're finding solace in the group texts and mutual aid chats and the new & renewed bonds with neighbors and our current places in the world, organizing for the long-needed change we'll need to bring about to survive and thrive, together. And maybe, if our part of the world is getting back on its feet, we want to get on with all those projects we started!
While the world is reeling from coronavirus consequences, it's all too clear that not everyone has been equally affected. Our greatest work right now is continuing to dismantle white supremacy, combating the calcification of xenophobia, racism, and all kinds bigotry, and shifting more of our resources, time, and energy into generating restorative systems. Even and especially within the creative world, it is our duty to vision, in these socially distant recovery times, how we will come together again and thrive in collaboration when we’re ready to gather safety again.