Development Residency Situationships

MORPHO presents Situationships
Development Residency 2027–2028
Open call for artists based in Flanders and Brussels

You can now apply for Situationships: a residency programme inviting artists based in Flanders and Brussels to explore alternative kinds of relationships resisting normative definition – with their work, themselves, each other, their surroundings, and beyond.

This residency programme encourages open situations rather than fixed positions, reassessing the fragile interdependencies and temporary connections within which artistic practices often operate. Here, the complexity of a situationship both encompasses and extends beyond interpersonal exchange. It also reflects our relationship with the world around us, pointing to the challenges of understanding, articulating, and constructively responding to our environment within interconnected ecological, social, and political systems.

The residency is understood not simply as a place where artistic work is produced, but as a developing situation – a temporary constellation in which artistic practices become situated, relational, and sensitive to the site. This open call is aimed at visual artists working within or beyond these fields of interest, who wish to develop their practice during a five-month funded residency in Antwerp and are eager to engage, or even flirt, with new situations.

MORPHO's development residency supports moments when a project needs the time and conditions to develop into a meaningful trajectory within an artistic practice, regardless of career stage. We encourage applicants to approach Situationships through the specificity of their own practice in the hope that this shared framework will resonate with many, and in different ways.

Period

The residency in Antwerp lasts five months. You can choose from three residency cycles, and we will welcome three artists per cycle.

• Cycle 1: Spring 2027 (01.02-30.06.2027)
• Cycle 2: Fall 2027 (01.08-31.12.2027)
• Cycle 3: Spring 2028 (01.02-30.06.2028)

For whom?

• You are a visual artist, possibly with a transdisciplinary approach.
• You want to dedicate five months to the development and professionalization of your artistic practice.
• You are based in Flanders, including Brussels, both at the time of application and during the residency. At least one spot per cycle is reserved for an Antwerp-based artist.
• You are not planning to participate in any other residencies or full-time academic commitments during your stay at MORPHO, as your attendance at the weekly sessions is expected.
• You can apply as an individual artist or a duo.
• You are welcome regardless of age, ethnic-cultural background, gender diversity, neurodiversity, or other lived experiences. MORPHO also welcomes artist-parents and strives to support their specific needs.
• We do our best to accommodate everyone’s needs, but the specific architecture of the building (stairs, no lift) means the residency is not accessible for everyone. You are welcome to contact us in advance to discuss your personal situation and access requirements.

What we offer

• Use of our shared residency house (including kitchen, living room, library and bathroom).
• Individual studio (ranging between 20-40 m2).
• Use of our project space and monastery garden.
• Artistic, productional and administrative guidance from MORPHO’s team.
• Weekly programme of sessions (composed in response to the residents’ input and interests, usually on Wednesdays).
• Studio visits by curators, artists, and cultural workers.
• Mentorship by the artistic council.
• Access to the production facilities of Sint Lucas Antwerpen (art academy with darkroom, ceramics, laser-cutting or screen-printing facilities, ...).
• Online presentation of your practice (website, newsletter and social media).
• A newly commissioned portrait by artist-photographer and former MORPHO resident Miles Fischler.
• Free entrance to exhibitions and events at neighbouring Kunsthal Extra City.
• A welcoming community, set in a thriving and calm environment.

Financial support

• We pay a monthly fee of €1,000 gross. We review with each resident what is the best option to arrange this administratively, taking into account their professional status and personal situation. However, it is essential that residents can be paid through the Belgian system.
• Duos are paid per person.
• Accommodation is not provided. For artists living outside of Antwerp, we reimburse public transport costs up to €100 per month.

Context

The year 2027 marks the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the Situationist International, an artistic, social, and political movement that profoundly influenced the student uprisings of May 1968, whose sixtieth anniversary falls in 2028. These historical turning points united artists, students, and workers to challenge established forms of social organisation, education, public space, and the role of culture within them. Although they unfolded within very different political realities, the questions they raised remain strikingly relevant today.

MORPHO is situated on the site of a former monastery that, throughout its history, has undergone multiple uses, including a period of occupation by anarchist squatters. Its history demonstrates that places are continuously reinvented by the communities that temporarily inhabit and shape them.

Situationships seeks to make space for practices that not only produce new images or objects, but also develop new ways of relating, sharing knowledge and imagining collective futures. We approach this context not out of nostalgia for the past, but from the conviction that history itself remains capable of generating new situations. With this in mind, we share some of the literary references that have informed this residency cycle:

• The Artist as Res(iden)t - Hito Steyerl and Boris Buden, 2006: “As residents we have most things in common, but we have few ways of acting in common.”
• The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, 1997: “Our vision of utopia has free love – in all its forms – as the foundations of our beliefs about reality, about possibility, about staying in the moment and planning the future.”
• Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective – Donna Haraway, 1988: “We need the power of modern critical theories of how bodies and meanings get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and bodies that have a chance for life.”
• The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord, 1967: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images."