MOHA, Cultuurmakers Maastricht, VIA ZUID, and SoAP Maastricht, call on you to participate in the project We live here, who cares? in Maastricht.

Are you an artist or collective, interested in the intersections between performance art, urbanism, anthropology and social artistic practices?

Then we invite you to join us in a workshop and possibly a four-week residency around our project We live here, who cares? in Pottenberg in Maastricht. ‘We’ are Alice and Olivia. Ten years ago we founded MOHA, a home to further explore and put our artistic beliefs into practice.

The project was initiated by Cultuurmakers Maastricht and is supported by Woonpunt with financial contributions from, among others, the Cultural Participation Fund and the municipality of Maastricht. The guidance is provided by talent development organization VIA ZUID and SoAP Maastricht.

MOHA’s name comes from the Hungarian word for moss. The name reflects our desire to behave like moss; moss can emerge and grow in the most unexpected environments. We see MOHA as a resilient and living ecosystem. It is not one entity, it has no fixed definition. It grows where many different fields come together: urbanism, anthropology, social choreography, magical realism, performance art, guerilla art, care and activism.

The city, its various social dynamics and the way people use their environment and specific places, are the starting point of all our initiatives. We always work according to one fixed principle: we are present. We come back every day, week after week, to the same place. Our performances start from this fact and can last a few days, 5 weeks, or a year. We meet the same people every day and become part of their routines and environment. We work with artists, curators, shop owners, stay-at-home mothers, scientists, homeless people, cleaners, social workers, nurses, and others. Throughout our process, the small talks, tea drinking, babysitting and cleaning, as well as our political and conceptual discussions, are the inspiration for our public outcomes.

A revolution starts with washing the dishes. Art is reinvented while washing those dishes. And with our projects we make connections between the arts field and other disciplines.

Care in Pottenberg

We are currently working in Maastricht, Pottenberg, where we have been allocated a temporary flat, which will be demolished in 2024. As part of this project we investigate the theme ‘care’ in relation to notions such as temporary housing, housing shortage, ‘neighbourhood’, making of a home, trying to belong somewhere.

Within this project, we organize – together with VIA ZUID and SoAP – a two-day workshop and a four-week paid residency in our Pottenberg apartment.

This residence offers the following options:

• Broadening experience within social art projects
• Exploring MOHA’s different working methods
• Developing new tools for your own artistic practice
• Developing your own ideas and projects

We offer you advice, brainstorming sessions and mentorship.

Two-day workshop

For those curious about what exactly this project entails, how we work, and what the form of our collaboration could be, we are hosting a two-day workshop, to which we invite artists from all different backgrounds. We hope to meet a variety of creatives during that workshop and jointly decide for whom this residency opportunity is the best match.

The workshop days are planned in the week of September 4 – 10; further consultation will follow.

Residencies

The two days are considered ‘working days’, just like the residency period. From the workshop days, a selection of a maximum of three makers will enter a social-artistic residency of four weeks. There will be two residency periods: between September and November 2023 + one between March and May 2024. Two selected groups of makers (maximum 6 in total) will live and work in De Pottenberg during these two residency periods. The residency periods both culminate in a central public ‘event’.

Apply

You can register for the workshop until June 15th via Joost Segers (VIA ZUID) or Anneke Tonen (SoAP Maastricht).