ACROSS

Innovative critic and curatorial residency program.

ACROSS is a programme of research, exploration and cooperation residencies for curators and/or art critics engaged in an in-depth reflection on the renewal of their practices.

It is imagined, developed and implemented by thankyouforcoming since March 2015 in Nice and its extended region.

Selected by a jury of professionals following a call for applications, the successful art critics and/or exhibition curators benefit from a 2 to 3 week residency in Nice. Thankyouforcoming organises 3 to 6 residencies each year, which may be the subject of partnerships with other national and international organizations. A programme of meetings and visits with artists and other art world workers (institutions, freelancers, galleries etc) between Cannes and Monaco is jointly organised by the residents and the artistic director of the association, thus facilitating an accurate and transversal knowledge of the French Riviera contemporary art scene.
Each resident also proposes a public event during their stay in order to share their work with as many people as possible, and is given editorial freedom to write a text on an aspect of their residency that is published in the “Made in Local” in the following months.

By welcoming residents who are specifically involved in a research area related to the emergence and renewal/development of critical and curatorial practices, the ACROSS residencies allow Maralpine artists to benefit from an outside and enriching perspective on their own work. This programme considers art critics and exchanges as tools for collective thinking, and mobility in the cultural area – that of the residents and the shifting of views it entails – as a specific way and medium for professionalization.

The ACROSS residencies intensify the visibility of Maralpine artists, notably through tools such as networking, commissioning of texts and sharing of resources. They are positioned as a facilitator to nurture and foster collaborations between the artistic scene of a given territory and external peers. By contributing to the construction and critical use of imagination and knowledge, they also help bring awareness of new audiences to professions and work processes that are still not quite identified, offering a new access to the contemporary art world.

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Discover an ecosystem

► Introduce residents to the local artistic scenes and their territories, fostering inter-disciplinary exchanges
► Enable the hosts to meet the cultural operators and visit the highlights of the area as well as its alternative scenes, through a close collaboration with artists, researchers, thinkers, museums, art centers, associations, galleries, academic institutions

To professionalise

► Invite to reflect on and offer innovative critical approaches to projects developed in Nice and suburb, as well as in the associated towns (Mouans-Sartoux, Antibes, Cannes, Vence, Monaco etc)
► Devise a new operational tool for research, prospection and transmission through the mobility (of people and points of view) of its actors and spreading of the contents
► Offer the possibility to frame a specific work or deepen a line of research, and provide assistance in research

Tools for networking

► Counter-balance the logic of centralisation and rebalance the power relations between Paris and the French provinces, centre and suburbs, local and global, national and international
► Contribute to the implementation of a cultural policy engineering from the Maralpine territory in order to be part of international networks of exchange, mobility and co-production
► Provide and support a framework allowing for the mobility of curators and critics, and make it visible
► Create opportunities for meetings, initiate and enable an environment for exchanges and discussions to foster common experiments in various disciplinary fields
► Develop efficient collaborative networks between worldwide professionals and local residents, and operate as a professional exchange resource in order to support internationalization of the local art ecosystem

To create and associate audiences

► Strengthen the cultural offer on the territory and to participate in the articulation between art and citizenship
► To make audiences aware with the process of conception, making and implementation of works and their criticism
► Facilitate the meeting between artists, critics/curators and audiences, raise awareness of contemporary art among new audiences.

Jurys’ members since 2015:
LE PIMPEC Bénédicte (art critic and curator) ;
MAHEKE Paul (artist) ;
ROMAN Mathilde (Phd in Arts and Sciences of Art, art critic (AICA France), and teacher at Pavillon Bosio – Monaco) ;
GUILLAUME Ann (artist) ;
RACINE Bruno (writer, former president of Centre Pompidou and Bibliothèque nationale de France) ;
FAUQ Cédric (art critic and curator at Palais de Tokyo, former ACROSS resident) ;
GUENIN Hélène (director of MAMAC – Nice) ;
LAPALU Sophie (art critic, curator, PhD in Visual Arts and Aesthetics, teacher at Clermont Métropole Fine Arts School) ;
MISPELAËRE Marianne (artist) ;
NABEYRAT Estelle (curator and independent art critic),
TRITZ Sarah (artist and teacher at ENSBA – Lyon).

Since 2015, with the support and/or collaboration of:
– le Narcissio,
– le MAMAC,
– la librairie Vigna,
– DEL’ART,
– la Villa Arson,
– la galerie Eva Vautier,
– la galerie Le 22,
– le CIDFF,
– la Kunsthalle3000,
– Colophon,
– MiBACT Italie
– le Ministère de la Culture,
– la ville de Nice,
– la Région Sud,
– le Département des Alpes-Maritimes,
– Mécènes du Sud Aix-Marseille…