The Art Monastery Project produces transformative art, performance, and music through an innovative creative process deeply inspired by tradition.

We will be accepting proposals for projects and proposals from individual artists interested in collaboration from all disciplines—including dancers, instrumentalists, singers, actors, designers, directors, stage managers, theater technicians, and visual artists—to collaborate and participate in the First Annual Art Monastery Festival from May to October 2009.

Submissions of projects will be facilitated via our Art Monastery Artist Network. To join the network, go to www.artmonastery.org/network. 

Dates to Remember

November 12, 2008: Proposal submissions will begin

November 22, 2008: Deadline for submissions

November 23-25 2008: Programming Summit, Casale Santa Brigida, Calvi dell'Umbria

For more info, email: programming@artmonastery.org

About the Festival

The town of Calvi has invited the Art Monastery Project to run a series of artistic events during the months of May to September. The festival will begin in May with the Feast of San Pancrazio, the ancient and exuberant festival of Calvi dell'Umbria's patron saint. The program of the festival will consist of a matrix of artist residencies, and project rehearsals, and performances in Calvi, accompanied by a series of performances in other Italian towns. During the festival, members of the project will occupy nine large renovated bedrooms of the convent.

Contact:  programming (at) ArtMonastery (dot) org

Theme

Projects of the Art Monastery Festival can be of any discipline or theme. We present the following three broad guidelines that are descriptive of the Art Monastery’s orientation.

“Monastic” Art: What is the art of an “art monastery”? The Festival this summer will also function as a working prototype of our experimental social sculpture: applying monastic lifestyle to the artmaking process. So what kind of art would be produced in a sacred, ecologically-efficient, contemplative, ancient space and community-model dedicated to creativity and art for the benefit of the outside world? You are invited to consider how to fully engage this environment and process for the benefit of your project and personal artmaking experience. 

Early Music & Ritual: Many of our first projects have been rooted in the musical and ritual traditions organic to this area (Mediæval through Baroque Italy) and referred to the historical traditions of monasticism. These projects have given us a reputation for sensitivity to our host’s cultural heritage, and we invite you to consider the enthusiasm of Italian audiences to further explore this rich and appreciated artistic source.

Interdisciplinary, contemporary music, dance, theatre and performance: Building upon our success and network of artists who work both in Early Music and other contemporary disciplines, we are now excited to branch out to new forms. We are also interested in creative cross-disciplinary collaborations that integrate elements from different eras and traditions. For example, one particular project, Decamerone, is in itself a “mini-festival” bringing together ten short performances in one evening/installation. In the world of Decamerone, artists have invited a public into a “quarantined space” for a Boccacio-inspired response to a contemporary plague. Thus performers from many disciplines can offer a variety of responses to this artistic provocation: either in composed pieces or structure improvisational collaborations with the other presenting artists, and in constructing the overall audience/performer/space installation itself.

Where

The Art Monastery and Calvi itself contains several evocative performance, rehearsal, and recording spaces, from an exquisite 17th century coro to its restored cellars, and three churches of different eras, acoustics, and scale. A performance in Calvi would be presented in return for their offering the lodging, rehearsal, and recording spaces.

We are also in contact with several larger towns nearby which have festivals and performance venues that offer paying performances (like La Rocca above Narni and even the Cathedrals of Orvieto and Terni) and it is our desire to network a few performances of any project and then seek regional funding to support them. Finally, if you are interested and think your project would be tourable, we can facilitate booking additional performances in Berlin, Amsterdam, and a number of other European cities.

What We Offer

Project Hosting: Our resources include free rooms for artists in a breathtaking, historic building, free access to rehearsal and recording spaces, and ability to prepare excellent healthy food cheaply in our own restaurant kitchen at the Casale S. Brigida.

Booking/Fundraising/Publicity: We provide access to established networks, including Federculture, the associations of Italian and Umbrian historic festivals, and cultural tourism initiatives of the Region of Umbria and BIC Lazio. Our active staff will help book multiple performances of a project and to seek external grants and funding in order to help pay for your transportation, food, and, hopefully, artist stipends.

Artist Community/Collaboration: We also offer an inspiring community of international and Italian artists to with whom to collaborate, realize new works, and extend your professional network. We have institutional affiliations contemporary art and theatre institutions, venues, and networks in the US and Europe as well a with major Early Music institutions like Indiana and York Universities.

Application Process

The deadline for project submission is November 22. Submissions of projects will be facilitated via our Art Monastery Artist Network, details and instructions to be announced on November 12, 2008.

Submissions will be considered and decided upon at the Programming Summit from November 23 to 25. Click here for more information if you would like to attend this Summit.

Current Festival Schedule

(just of projects we already know about... there will be more, and personnel can overlap)

April 26 to May 17

Medieval music and theatre pieces at S. Pancrazio and regional festivals

May 4 to 12

Gregorian chant workshop and chant performances at S. Pancrazio on May 11

May 17 to June 1

Pause (or self-contained project)

June 1 to July 8

Several proposed projects, including Decamerone, a Western Swing Band, and a Dance project, and a touring Renaissance Feast in collaboration with Calvi's Coro Polifonico

June 23-July 4

Potential 17thC Roman Vespers (music of Asprilio Pacelli et al)

July 1 to 14

Potential Palestrina Mass and recording project

July 10-22

Potential Nun’s Vespers (Isabella Leonarda music in a liturgical reconstruction of a Vespers for the Feast of Mary Magdalene in the style of Ursuline nuns)

July 15 to Aug 10

Potential children's workshops

July 27-Aug 15

Potential Clausura Sconfinata: (Isadora Duncan dance piece in historic cloisters with chant and 17thC nuns’ music accompaniment)

Aug 10 to Sept 15

Pause

Sept 15 to Oct 15

Open for further projects

credit: www.artventurous.wordpress.com

What kind of Projects are Appropriate

The Art Monastery Festival represents a special and unusual opportunity for artists to expand the cultural and creative horizons. It is definitely not a traditional "gig".

Instead of being a job in which performers sell their commoditizable product that they always do, we're inviting professional artists to seize this opportunity to grow and invest in your career by developing a new project, making a demo recording, and/or collaborating with new artists... possibly outside your discipline. It's also an opportunity to experience and experiment with a new way of being... a new, immersive way of art as life.

You are welcome to submit traditional projects (along with your budget requirements) immediately and, if they are within the broad guidelines above, we will include them in our packets to “sell” to other sponsoring venues. 

However, priority will be given to artists and projects that are either self-funded (or have an external grant... for which we are very willing to provide formal invitations) or are willing to commit to realizing their project here and accept the risk in the acquisition of other paying performances and funding.  

We are very optimistic, given the positive reception of our recent projects and our growing reputation and network, we cannot guarantee any subsidizing of projects other than free rooms at the monastery, more economical food preparation, and extensive overhead investment we towards acquiring and publicizing additional performances.

Our goal, as an institution, will be to support world-class artwork with competitive levels of compensation to artists. However, although we are not yet at that phase financially, we DO have a stunning set of resources to offer that can support many fantastic collaborations that will yield creative inspiration now and other dividends in the future.