ART RESIDENCY
Each year, the Residency will invite a group of artists and researchers to live and work in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The Residency will provide them with the time, space, and support to experiment, collaborate, and create new work.

Following health requirements, the Residency will be flexible to operate at different times and locations, caring for the residents and their work. While the preference will be to invite them to Saint-Cirq for one-month, other models of residence will be considered as needed.

SUMMER EVENT
This one-week Summer Event will bring artists, partners, guests and publics together making Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, a temporary center for artistic creativity.

The Summer Event will present the work developed during the residency and will organize a series of presentations, interventions, performances, and live situations, looking to engage with the public and using a variety of spaces in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

PUBLICATIONS
Throughout the year, the Program will work with residents and invited guests to produce a series of Publications. These will be dedicated to specific themes and will have an open-format, using online and offline ways to connect with a larger public.

Collaborating with designers, artists, researchers, and academics, the Publications will be a mode to communicate and expand on the interests and character of the Program. At the end of the four-year cycle, the Program will work towards a Book, that will gather all the projects and activities.

EDITIONS
Working with the residents, the Program will develop a series of limited editions of print materials and art pieces. Elaborating from the Surrealist’s interest in objects, the Editions will connect to the resident’s projects, forming a collection of the works created during the Residency.

The Residency Program works with artists and researchers from different disciplines in the production of new projects. In doing so, the Program cultivates collaborative practices, investigates multiple creative methods, and advances into a critical perspective of our present, marked by ecological and democratic crises.

In considering the legacies of Surrealism, the Program proposes a dialogue with the aim not to revive Surrealism, but rather to elaborate a contemporary reading.

Once a revolutionary practice that intended to shake the world in the aftermath of the First World War, Surrealism signaled the complexities of the human mind as impacted in the larger problems of social organization. Breton and his circle questioned Modernity and developed creative processes to unveil the mechanisms that conditioned social life. Usually identified by its use of automatic writing, the found object, collage, appropriation, the juxtaposition of materials, and attraction to the unconscious and the uncanny, Surrealism became a world-making movement working across mediums, such as architecture, film, dance, literature, and visual art.

As Surrealism approaches its 100th Anniversary, the Program is an opportunity to consider how we work with the cultural past to address our troubled present. Surrealism was at the same time an artistic and political avant-garde, that developed a life praxis in close proximity to communism, anarchism, and the negritude movement as an opposition to colonialism and eurocentrism. With their work, artists and authors developed a critique to Western culture and its cannons, while at the same time looked for non-hegemonic knowledges either from pre-colonial Africa or from pagan traditions in Europe, hence Breton’s love for Saint-Cirq-Lapopie as the village emerged from the depths of medieval history.

The Residency Program brings together research and creation to revise and expand Surrealism’s subversive force today. Through different lines of work, the Program is looking to address particular themes and topics, engaging with residents and guests in a collective effort that will make of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie a neuralgic center of the 100th Anniversary of the publication of André Breton’s First Surrealist Manifesto.

Departing from Surrealism and its strategies, the Program gathers practitioners from different fields developing a transdisciplinary view on creativity as a tool to tackle today’s world in crisis.

2021
➞ Foundation of the Art Residency Program.

➞ Starting in September, PARADE will be the first thematic year cycle.

➞ Establishing the Partners Circle.

2022
➞ Presentation and publication of PARADE projects and related research materials.

➞ Second Residency cycle and Public Event in September.

2023
➞ Third Residency cycle and Public Event in September.

2024
➞ Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the First Manifesto of Surrealism written by André Breton.

In partnering with Radicale 1924, you will contribute to a non-for-profit organization dedicated to cultivating contemporary art and supporting artists and their work as they engage with the history of Surrealism and that of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

The Partners will be engaged at all times, and together with the Board of Advisors and the Board of Directors they will connect with a network of cultural and economic agents regionally and across Europe involved in the Celebrations of the 100th Anniversary of the First Manifesto of Surrealism.

Radicale 1924 receives support from the town council, La Mairie de Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, Le Musée Rignault and Maison Breton.

In liaising with us, the Partners will be invited to a series of private events, coinciding with the artist’s residency in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in late summer and will engage in a unique program promoting artistic innovation, academic research, historical heritage and cultural creativity.

The group of selected Partners will participate in the PARTNERS CIRCLE gaining a steady presence in the cultural life of Southern France, networking with public and private entities dedicated to craft a new vision for rural areas in an exciting moment of transformation, that opens new opportunities for business as newcomers are establishing in the area.

Radicale 1924 establishes a network of cultural agents, and public and private entities collaborating to situate Saint-Cirq-Lapopie as a pole of artistic and economic attraction.

In doing so, Radicale 1924 contributes to the cultural landscape of the Lot Valley and the Occitan Region by developing a program of contemporary art in dialogue with the historical legacies treasured in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

The Residency invites artists and cultural practitioners to live and work in the village, in direct contact with the neighbors and their extended community. By supporting artistic creativity, the residency situates art as a public good.

Radicale 1924 generates new bounds with art and educational organizations, collaborating in the realization of projects focused on academic research, student development, and artistic practices.

In developing its activities, the Program aids in shaping new publics, revalorizing the experience of visitors, and stimulating the historical narrative of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie as a center for creativity.

JOHN C. WELCHMAN
Professor of Modern Art History in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. John writes regularly on modern and contemporary art and critical theory. Among his numerous publications are Past Realization: Essays on Contemporary European Art; After the Wagnerian Bouillabaisse: Essays on European Avant-Garde Art; Modernism Relocated: Towards a Cultural Studies of Visual Modernity; Invisible Colours: A Visual History of Titles; and Art After Appropriation: Essays on Art in the 1990’s. He is the editor of three collections of writings by the artist Mike Kelley, and the co-editor of Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art. Welchman has written art criticism for Artforum, where he had a column in the late 1980s and early 90s; Screen; and the New York Times, among other newspapers and journals.

GERALDINE CELLI
Performing Arts Curator at Wendel Auditorium and Studio, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France.

MARK GEURDEN
Independent Consultant. Bachelors in Romance languages and literature at the University of Antwerp. Additionally, he specialized in so-called “pragma-semiotics” (performance analysis) during a post-academic study in theatre sciences at the universities of Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. From 1996 till 1999 he worked as a member of staff and artistic advisor for the programming of the Cultural Centre of Hasselt, Belgium (theatre and dance). Until September 2020, he worked as a staff member of Troubleyn/Jan Fabre, a theatre company in Antwerp, responsible for the artistic development of the company infrastructure (Troubleyn/Laboratorium) and for the (long term) artistic and financial policy of the company in general. In 2010 he founded the research group “Laboratorium”, which is a trans-disciplinary scientific research group focusing on the teachings and training guidelines developed by Jan Fabre. Since 2021, he is active as an independent consultant and dramaturg.

STEFAN WOUTERS
Curator Magritte Museum, Brussels. Professor Art History, Vrije Universiteit Brussels. Stefan is a professor and curator working on temporary interventions in the public space. Inspired by the art history classes he attended at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, he decided to study Art History and Archaeology at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). During these studies he worked as a translator and a writer for the communication department of the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels. His interest increasingly shifted towards time-based art forms and in 2015 he received a double PhD in Art History and Archaeology (Free University of Brussels) and in Theater Sciences (University of Antwerp) for his research on the Belgian Happening scene of the mid-1960s. In order to finance his studies he collaborated for the online database Belgium is Happening and participated as a performance artist in the international performance group Virtual Vérité, led by Los Angeles-based artist Harry Gamboa, Jr. Stefan has been the curator of the Belgium Performance Festival.

CHANTAL YZERMANS | Director and Founder
Trained as a dancer at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerpen, Chantal moved to New York in 2000 to study for six years with Merce Cunningham and his Company. Chantal’s work has been presented at different venues and festivals internationally, among them Centre Pompidou Metz, Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Rencontres Chorégraphiques Seine Saint Denis, and M_HKA Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerpen. Now a full-time resident of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, Chantal’s vision is to bring contemporary artists to advance in creative methods and practices that approach the history and legacies of this medieval village.

XAVIER ACARÍN WIELAND | Curator Xavier has presented projects and exhibitions at different venues such as Elastic City, Parsons School of Design, The Hessel Museum, Abrons Arts Center, and Knockdown Center in New York, La Ira de Dios in Buenos Aires, HIAP in Helsinki, and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation and CaixaForum in Barcelona. Xavier teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York and is a PhD student at the Visual Culture Department at Goldsmiths University of London.

RADICAL LOW | Production Company
Radical Low is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to produce and disseminate the performing and visual arts by organizing contemporary interdisciplinary projects in a permanent context of research and cooperation, as well as developing educational actions for all audiences. Radical Low was registered in the Lot region of South West France in January 2020, Registration Number: W461006540. The head office for Radical Low is located in the municipality of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie: Le Bourg, 46330, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France.

Sylvia Zade Routier, President
Claudio Schönenberger, Treasurer

RADICALE 1924 | Art Residency Program

Radicale 1924 is a newly formed Art Residency Program at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France. Created to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the publication of the First Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton. Radicale 1924 is a project administered by the not-for-profit organization Radical Low.

Chantal Yzermans, Founder and Director
Xavier Acarín Wieland, Curator