We run two residency programs to generate and produce innovative ideas in and around Palermo. 

Generative Residencies allow an artist, collective, activist, or thinker to familiarise themselves with Fondazione Studio Rizoma and Palermo and to develop a joint project idea on-site for approximately 2-4 weeks. 

Production Residencies build on the results of the generative residencies and enable the resident to return to Palermo for a more extended period to produce the devised project. 

Generative Residents will be invited and accompanied by the Rizoma team to meet people with relevant expertise or possible cooperation partners and to get to know the city of Palermo and the region of Sicily. Residents can arrive in Palermo with a concrete project to develop, or they can let the city guide them to develop one. Residents receive a per diem of €300 per week plus travel and accommodation.

Residents deal with issues and have developed practices that can be fruitfully connected with Palermo and the working focus of one of the Nodes of Rizoma. The generative phase of project development jointly makes a project tangible, fostering the opportunity for a longer-term collaboration with the resident. In this sense, the generative residency scheme also opens up the definition of Rizoma’s work program enabling participatory co-design.

Where deemed of mutual interest, and depending on the financial requirements and funding availability, residents may return to Palermo as Production Residents. In this case, they will be engaged in producing the generated idea, normally in collaboration with Rizoma and with local partners, they have identified during their first, generative stay. We place particular value in tandem or cooperation with Palermo-based individuals or groups. Production residencies are assessed and planned on a bespoke, individual basis, with a dedicated production budget additionally made available.

Residencies emerge organically out of the work and partnerships of Fondazione Studio Rizoma, and there is no advertised open call. However, if you have a specific idea in mind that would require a residential period in Palermo you are invited to get in touch by email and briefly present yourself, your idea, and your timescale in a one-page word attachment.

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Current and past residents

Patrick Mudekereza

Curator—Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Patrick Mudekereza

Curator—Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Patrick Mudekereza is a writer and cultural operator born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where he currently lives and works. He initiated several art projects, including one with the collective Vicanos Club, concomitantly studying industrial chemistry at the Polytechnic faculty of the University of Lubumbashi. He then worked as administrator and curator for visual arts at the French Cultural Centre in Lubumbashi, and he is the editor of the cultural magazine Nzenze. Mudekereza has initiated and collaborated with many publications and exhibitions both in Congo and internationally. In 2014, he received the National Award for Art and Culture from the Congolese Ministry of Art and Culture. He is the director of the Centre d’Art Picha and co-initiator of the Rencontres Picha, Lubumbashi Bienniale. Over the past ten years, Mudekereza has initiated a number of different projects, such as a magazine, cultural events, and exhibitions. He was a member of the steering committee of Arterial Network from 2009 to 2014 and is now a member of its cultural policy task team.

Ibrahim Owais

Sound Artist—Palestine

Ibrahim Owais

Sound Artist—Palestine

Ibrahim Owais, is the founder of Recordat, and one part of Radio Alhara. His work revolves around designing, developing, and creating cross-media experiences for both digital and physical spaces.He specializes in creating spatial sound performances and immersive space projects that utilize sound, architecture, and science to fabricate imaginary environments. As a sound artist, he focuses on the intersection of these elements to bring new experiences to life.Whether it’s a DJ set or a sound performance his sound is in constant change, evolving with time and resonating in space. Owais uses Dj tools as instruments combining improvisational elements to create soundscapes and form cinematic sonic narratives.

Adrien Buyukodabas

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Designer, Italy

Adrien Buyukodabas

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Designer, Italy

Highlighted by a diploma from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, his studies in Object Design was punctuated by a stopover in Mexico and preceded by two years of multidisciplinary training in arts and design in Lyon. Following the encounters, he deploys since 2019 his projects between France and Italy; seeking to inscribe his work in the territory of Sicily alongside the Palermitan design structure MarginalStudio. This path through multiple context leads him to conceive his work as an activity at the meeting point of plural approaches: artistic and anthropological, historical and scientific… as much concerned with forms as with exchanges and narratives as with expertises.
From the scale of spaces — pretexts for encounters and exchanges — to the one of objects thought as a multitude of tools supporting transmissions and collective reflexions, he conceives the design as a way to question territories and their socio-economic realities ; a method to probe with their inhabitant the constructions of the identities and the future of the local cultural and economic specificities.

Adrien Buyukodabas is one of the winning residents of the Residency On The Road programme.

Piero Consentino

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Researcher and Farmer, Italy

Piero Consentino

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Researcher and Farmer, Italy

Piero Consentino (Ragusa, 1987) has a degree in history and philosophy with a specialist training in philosophy of language and aesthetics. He has been working in the social and educational fields with a focus on migrations, then he took part in publishing and independent theater productions. He was really active in movements for the commons and for food sovereignty.
Since six years he was a farmer in the center of Sicily. His project is called Convegno di Marte, from the name of the place: it is inspired by the principle of agroecology and the ethics of permaculture: caring for the earth, caring for people and sharing resources. He cultivates and preserves ancient grains and legumes and is about to open and artisanal stone mill and pasta factory. He is involved in collective network projects to recreate connection in the inland rural areas. Living and working with the earth, seeds and plants meant for me being able to reconnect to natural cycles and rhythms, go through adversity and learning to rejoice in the extraordinary abundance and diversity that surrounds us.

Piero Consentino is one of the winning residents of the Residency On The Road programme.

Genny Petrotta

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Artist, Italy

Genny Petrotta

RESIDENCY ON THE ROAD—Artist, Italy

Genny Petrotta (1990) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Palermo.Her artistic practice, guided by poetry and through video installation, seeks the sublimation of a wide range of interests and influences, from anthropological and philosophical to historical. Since 2016 she has been part of Il Pavone, an artistic collective with which she has exhibited in festivals and exhibition spaces including Manifesta12 Collateral, Spazio Y Rome, Adiacenze Bologna, Festival Effetto48, Cassata Drone Palermo, Festival Main off Palermo. Since 2017 he has been working with the artistic duo MASBEDO as assistant director and also covering other roles. In 2022 she directed the production of the video installation « U scantu » by Elisa Giardina Papa presented at the 59th Venice Biennale and coordinated the production of « Alkestys » by Beatrice Gibson and Nick Gordon presented at the British Art Show.

Genny Petrotta is one of the winning residents of the Residency On The Road programme.

25 mai 2023 — Genny Petrotta

GENNY PETROTTA: Kumeta

Diana Lola Posani

March 2023—Sound Artist and Performer, Italy

Diana Lola Posani

March 2023—Sound Artist and Performer, Italy

Diana Lola Posani, sound artist, performer and curator, is a certified Deep Listening facilitator by the Deep Listening Foundation. She performs internationally, writes in the journal A Row of Trees, curated by the Sonic Art Research Unit (SARU) – Oxford Brookes University, and debuted in 2022 on Fango Radio with the podcast Kaikokaipuu. She is currently interested in working on the shared space between sound and poetic imagery through interdisciplinary works and sound poems. Her work has been presented at Errant Sound, Tsonami Sound Art Festival, NEXTONES festival, and in the sound art platform Licheni, curated by NUB project space.

In March her translation of the book “Deep Listening – The Sound Practice of a composer” by Pauline Oliveros, was published by Timeo publishing house.

Gloria Dorliguzzo

March 2023-Choreographer, Italy

Gloria Dorliguzzo

March 2023-Choreographer, Italy

Starting from martial arts and the art of the Japanese sword, which she still practices, she approached contemporary dance. After graduating from the Italian Professional School of Dance, she immediately started collaborating as a performer with the National Academy of Rome, the Wuppertal Theater and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, coming into contact with internationally renowned choreographers and directors such as: Nikos Lagousakos, Cindy Van Acker, Claudia Castellucci, Crysanthi Badeka, Ariella Vidach, Gisele Vienne. Her meeting with Yoshito Ohono, MaluAiraldo and Adriana Boriello was decisive in her choice to direct her choreographic and performance language towards a continuous research on the body and its movement, including Visual Art, theater and new digital media in her poetics and multimedia. From 2010 to 2018 she collaborated as a performer for Monica Casadei’s Artemis Danza company, taking her shows all over the world. Her works include « Narcissus’s way, » presented at Infinito Studio Gallert TriBeCa, in which body, sensuality, interaction with the audience. With the OltreModo collective she presented the performance « Corpi » at the Infinito Studio Gallery in New York. A post-apocalyptic scenario in which real elements and imaginary references are mixed constitutes the performance of a hybrid nature. In collaboration with Did Studio and Studio Azzurro, she created « In Fieri – Dissolvenza del divenire, » a performance installation in which body and sound dialogue. Since 2013, she has collaborated with director Romeo Castellucci, both as performer and choreographer, further developing the qualities of plasticity, dynamism and compositional rhythm applied to the totality of the performing and visual arts. As a performer of her shows, she worked on such extraordinarily important stages as: Adelaide Festival of Arts, Festival dAutomne, Holland Festival, deSingle, Peak Performance Montclair, Festival Transamerique-Montreal. Under Castellucci’s direction as choreographer, Gloria performed in The Third Reich and at the Bonn Beethovenfest: « Pavane für Prometheus » for the Bonn Festival in September.

16 avril 2023 — Gloria Dorliguzzo

Gloria Dorliguzzo in conversation with Studio Rizoma

Eliza Collin

November 2022—Designer, UK

Eliza Collin

November 2022—Designer, UK
Contacts

Eliza Collin (Plymouth,1993) is a British designer and researcher. Her practice spans areas of ethnography, art, co-design, curation, and education. She develops bodies of research and methodologies focussing on new systems, perspectives and ways of relating to material, resources and the environment. Delivering design-led, third party projects from Cornwall to Kuching, she’s worked as a Project Manager and Community Director in the ongoing Palestine based cross-cultural collaboration Samak Bilab Bi Delo and been commissioned to develop research projects from Studio Rizoma (Sicily, 2020), LIPA festival (Makassar, 2020) and Narratives of Soil (Kuching, 2021) with architect Wendy Teo for the British Council to name a few. As well as being an active member of the United Matters collective she holds an MA in Material Futures from UAL Central Saint Martins.

She was first inspired by the accounts of Sicilian farmers on how deforestation and overuse have rendered the water cycle unpredictable. She collaborated with researchers in Ghana and Jersey to design the regenerative water recycling kitchen, Aqua Dentro (2021). This work on the displacement of water, its consumption and recycling, stemmed from a body of ethnographic research carried out in Sicily, highlighting the potential of design to affect human perception and in turn promote best practice. She accomplished this through international expert engagement and researching indigenous systems and technologies. She explored their potential for laying the foundations of advanced contemporary methodologies through the focus on challenging how we see water, how we understand it as a resource, how it moves through the land and is pulled into the cities, and how it is expected to be used and disposed of. The work challenged old inflexible and hierarchical systems and produced community projects providing strategic support, direction and navigation to achieve excellent, relevant and long-lasting outputs.

Since then she has been working on water-related projects within the government design team PolicyLab, collaborating on a rainwater harvesting system for the BlueCity Rainwater Hackathon (Rotterdam, 2022) and is currently in residence in Utrecht for Gemene Grond: Water is what we make it (Utrecht, 2022).

Articles from our residents

25 mai 2023 — Eliza Collin

ELIZA COLLIN: Wet Zones

25 mai 2023 — Genny Petrotta

GENNY PETROTTA: Kumeta

16 avril 2023 — Gloria Dorliguzzo

Gloria Dorliguzzo in conversation with Studio Rizoma

10 février 2023 — Eliza Collin

Interview with designer Eliza Collin: “The question we should be asking is not one of quantity but one of quality”

25 janvier 2023 — Eliza Collin

Eliza Collin: WET ZONES

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