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

Marta De Pascalis

Sound Artist—Italy

Marta De Pascalis

Sound Artist—Italy

Marta De Pascalis’ sonic world acts as an uncanny translator that freezes and expands emotions, conveying them into unique soundscapes. Her solo works employ analog, fm synthesis, and a tape-loop system, whereby she carves waveforms to shape cathartic sound bodies. She has performed at several festivals and venues, notably Berlin Atonal, Museo Reina Sofia, Biennale di Venezia, Berghain, Volksbühne, Café Oto, and Mutek Festival.Sky Flesh, her latest album, has been published on Caterina Barbieri’s light-years imprint.

Aylin Çankaya

Researcher/Activist—Turkey

Aylin Çankaya

Researcher/Activist—Turkey

Aylin Çankaya was born in 1989 in Antakya, Turkey. She graduated from the Department of Architecture at Eskişehir Osmangazi University in 2013 and received her M.Arch. in History, Theory, and Criticism in Architecture at Istanbul Bilgi University in 2016. Her master’s thesis problematized space through the state of being an island (islandness), which cannot be considered a city or a rural area, and argued that the pre-acceptance of the urban-rural dichotomy is no longer valid. She is currently working on her Ph.D. thesis entitled Back-to-the-Land Movements at The Periphery of Istanbul: The Expanding Commoning Networks based on Accessing Fair Food in NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). With the support of Sivil Düşün (a European Union program), she conducted a video series with seven different food producers entitled Back-to-the-Land Initiatives in the Periphery of Istanbul: Seeking the Right to Access to Fair, Healthy, and Clean Food in the City. The project revealed the importance of soil, seed, and water for these food producers, who argued for cooperation and degrowth in the face of massive urban expansion. In light of this fieldwork, she wants to continue approaching Istanbul as an urban ecology and explore the social, political, and economic processes that produce it.

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 Maio 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.

Articles from our residents

25 Maio 2023 — Eliza Collin

ELIZA COLLIN: Wet Zones

25 Maio 2023 — Genny Petrotta

GENNY PETROTTA: Kumeta

16 Abril 2023 — Gloria Dorliguzzo

Gloria Dorliguzzo in conversation with Studio Rizoma

10 Fevereiro 2023 — Eliza Collin

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

25 Janeiro 2023 — Eliza Collin

Eliza Collin: WET ZONES

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