Dear Prospective Fellows,
HPI is a laboratory for artistic research. In our Spring 2021 semester we are offering a residency program that responds to the vital question, “How do we make art now?”
As always, the action of our program is to convene a community of inquiry around the work of each artist, offering support and structure in a context of experimentation and compassionate engagement with one another. As artists ourselves, we are eager to create a container and conversation for art in this time.
Below, we are excited to share an overview of how we are conceptualizing this spring’s program. We look forward to making and sharing a ton of art together! We will continue to communicate with you about how we are shaping the program for current circumstances, and we welcome your feedback and conversation as we approach February.
+ Safety first. Headlong is committed to doing all it can to control the spread of this pandemic, seeing especially the danger it poses the most vulnerable in our communities. We will continue to closely follow public-health guidance.
Though we cannot now be sure of pandemic conditions in the spring, we do know much about how the virus spreads. HPI will not convene indoor cohort gatherings during the pandemic. Instead, we are offering solo in-studio opportunities, virtual group workshops and conversations, one-on-one online mentorship structures, and outdoor/distanced resources.
+ Thinking Through Making. How does convening online interrupt and transform the traditional approaches of a cloistered, studio-based model of practice? We believe there is an opportunity now to open our understanding of venues for exploration, practice and performance to include all the spaces we inhabit. We will conduct deliberate inquiry into embodied forms using digital spaces as a tool to leverage practice in more directions than before. We are explicitly reshaping elements of our program--for example, our weekly salon--to intentionally explore how a cohort of artists can help one another develop work for audiences beyond the confines of studios, residencies, and the canonical art world.
+ FDR Park Partnership. We are currently designing a module that will center itself on shared inquiry of the unique possibilities of outdoor artmaking. Similar to our approach to online work, we will seek to engage with work outdoors on its own terms, rather than as just a provisional translation-space for studio work. As part of this module, Headlong is in conversation with the magnificent FDR Park in South Philadelphia. This park is a crown jewel of Philadelphia’s cultural heritage--348 acres of dynamic wonderland that includes a defunct golf course, woodland trails, a lagoon, landscape architecture, a skate park and more. We hope to offer fellows access to this incredible venue as resource for outdoor exploration.
+Conversation and Container. Especially now, we wish to encourage engagement with your art as you make it and as you seek connection in your process. We are assembling real-time resources--like workshops, group practices, and guest artist sessions--as well as asynchronous structures--places for you to share your work and thoughts with the cohort on a daily or hourly basis.
HPI Fellows will get their own personal allotment of hours when they will have the Headlong studios all to themselves. We are also going to offer more extensive one-on-one mentorship in this iteration of the program; in these isolated and distanced times, we are especially eager to make real what is always true: your art does not happen in a vacuum. In addition, Headlong has a digital design partnership with Vectorworks that provides computers and software licenses, as well as a full textile/costume design studio to which fellows will have access to in support of their work.
+ Community Leadership and Practice. The agency of the fellows as individuals and as a group are at the center of shaping the program as it progresses: this was already part of our program, but we believe it is even more important now. We will convene a weekly community session with space for you to say what you want and get what you need. The structure and activities of the program are intended to be strong and yet malleable. HPI will adapt to the needs of the cohort and be guided by their leadership.
+Integrating with your life. The scheduling of activities, workshops, showings and conversations is designed to be simultaneously immersive and flexible, so artists can meet the demands of their sustaining life and work outside of the program.
Headlong believes in art as a part of life--not as some abstraction separate from it--and this is a foundational part of the HPI ethos. We are a small program, and as we finalize the composition of our 2021 cohort, we will have the opportunity to tailor this iteration of HPI to the needs of a very specific community of contributors. This is not an easy time to be an artist, but we believe it is an important time to be one, and Headlong is hopeful that, in drawing on our longstanding commitments to adaptability and community engagement, we can help one another meet this moment.
We’ll continue talking with all of you over the next few months, but we encourage you to reach out to us whenever you have a thought or question about HPI Spring 2021. We look forward to the program and to talking more!
Warmly,
David