THE WATCH // CARE-TAKING

Open Call for residencies — Deadline: 1st of March 2021

The Watch is a group of artists, cultural producers and researchers who inhabit one of the last remaining former GDR watchtowers in Berlin on Schlesischer Busch (Berlin-Treptow on the edge of Berlin-Kreuzberg) during the summer months in the formats of residencies, semi-public events, screenings and talks.

The former GDR border surveillance tower has had a long tradition of cultural and artistic production since German reunification. In recent years, the watchtower has served as a place for reflection rather than mere production: artists, writers, choreographers, and other thinkers have been invited to spend time within and around the watchtower to consider the tower’s texture, its particular architecture, its history, its future, as well as its present position within Berlin’s cultural and political landscape.

For every two-year cycle, The Watch works with one thematic topic.
For the 2020 and 2021 cycle, The Watch is interested in initiating dialogues with the invited residents of the watchtower on the notions and practices of “caretaking”. Questions of taking care and what exactly to care about are present in nearly every decision we have to make as The Watch — especially due to our situation hosting an artist residency in a protected monument on a very low budget.

These reflections and dialogues may be based directly on the experience of the artist/researcher/producer spending time in this unique historical structure and having to find a way of dealing with both their own needs as well as the needs of the building. We are also equally interested in approaches that go beyond the actual situation of the watchtower, and that connect in a more conceptual level, using the tower as a site of reflection and/or as a studio space.

In 2021 The Watch is offering three (3) residencies of six (6) weeks at the listed watchtower. We are looking for individuals or small collectives who are interested in responding to this cycle’s themes during residency periods scheduled between late April and early October 2021.

Find information about the 2020 residents here.