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 2026: LOVE

Water – Salt – Gossip – Flowers 

love * practice * freedom

 

Liberating love from the concept of romance, the Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral invites artists, educators and curators to send us proposals for a residency in Bad Ems, Germany beginning in April 2027.

Our exploration of loving as practicing freedom departs from three moments:

  • Love as a practice, as described by bell hooks:  “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
  • Loving as an act of unmasking ideologies of race, class, time and space We listen to Meshell Ndegecello’s work on James Baldwin, and particularly these lines from the seminal The Fire Next Time: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
  • Loving as a way of communal care, as a way to hold differences, often uncomfortable ones, with courage: “For the joy of being together, they did not have to agree.” This, as the title of our annual theme, is paying homage to – and playing with – the work “To Become Two. Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice” by Alex Martinis Roe, published by Archive Books.

We invite artists, curators and educators to gather in Bad Ems. We are looking forward to receiving applications for aesthetic endeavours, exhibition projects, speculations, new poetics, and communal propositions, movement work and erotics as ethics. 

In 2027, one of our fellowships – a three months long fellowship (May-July 2027) – is inviting artists from Rwanda to apply as a celebration of the relationship between Rwanda and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Kindly send your portfolios via our application platform (link):

https://kunsthochschule-mainz.aptecloud.valucon.de/auth/anmelden

Before you do, kindly make sure you have read our notes on Balmoral below.

Our growing book shelf:

Alex Martinis Roe. To Become Two. Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice. Archive Books, 2018.

James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time. Dial Press, 1963.

bell hooks: All about Love. New Visions. Harper, 1999.

We offer, between April and November 2027:

  • 2 x 8-months fellowship for artists
  • 1 x 4-months fellowship for artists
  • 1 x 3-months fellowship for an artist from Rwanda
  • 1 x 4-months fellowship for an educator
  • 1 x 4-months fellowship for an artist at risk 
  • 2 x 4-month fellowship for curators

Our call for fellows for the year 2027 is embedded in our larger vision for the Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral. We envision a table of artists, makers, thinkers and healers that fills in the years to come. In 2025, we had invited the tricksters, the fellows of 2025, to join the table. In 2026, the alchemists are here. In the years to come, we will invite those who contemplate and practice love deeply, the poets and those who make us laugh to form part of this imaginary table, from which other worlds emerge and become possible. As the poet Joy Harjo writes in her poem Perhaps the World Ends Here: “The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.”  Our year together will be interwoven with experiences, trips, lectures, dinners and discussions.

Before you apply, please make sure you read these notes on our the residency programme:

Kindly note: Bad Ems is a small town in Germany. A very small town. Do make sure you are aware of the location of the residency.

Our residency thrives on a communal spirit, while respecting privacy and individualism. You will share a kitchen with other fellows, but you will have your own apartment, bathroom and atelier. We host regular tables with all fellows to exchange, forge ideas and connect.

We are aware of the role we can play as a serious playground for an open society. We therefore have a public programme running at the Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral: Exhibitions, a Balmoral Salon, Summer Schools, a children’s art festival, and some more. There will be people in the castle at certain times, which you’ll find clearly marked in your calendar.

We love care. You can bring your child(ren). Discuss with us about arrangements that work for all of us.

Unfortunately, our historic building is not yet as accessible-free as we want it to be, but we are in the process of re-imagining the Artist Residency Schloss Balmoral in the spirit of inclusive aesthetics. We encourage artists, writers and curators with disabilities to apply and get in touch with us regarding making it all work. Please contact the Director, Dr. Katharina Fink (director@balmoral.de) directly. She’s looking forward to hearing from you!