Khôra / Χώρα is a new 10-day residency for site-specific cinema and sound projects on the Cycladic island Syros. Co-organized by the Syros International Film Festival and SyrosSoundMeetings.
Khôra will take place at the Syros Institute, housed in a refurbished 16th-century Jesuit Monastery in Ano Syros. Up to 12 active film-makers/video artists and musicians/ sound artists with a documented track record and interest in site-specific, documentary, experimental and/or cross-media projects will be given the opportunity to stay at the premises and work in group to create original, collaborative sound-film works on the theme of Khôra, a key term in ancient and contemporary philosophies of place (including Plato, Derrida, Kristeva and others). The resultant works will be screened as completed or in-progress projects at the end of the residency, and as part of the Syros International Film Festival. Participants will also have the opportunity to work with two internatio nally acclaimed guest artists, Michael Pisaro (composer, California Institute of the Arts) and Deborah Stratman (artist & filmmaker, University of Illinois at Chicago), who will also contribute their own projects.
An important aspect of the residency is the required collaboration between cinema and sound artists. In various sized groups formed ad hoc and on site, joint projects will be undertaken, with the artists sharing responsibility in the development, production and editing of their projects. We hope that this dialogue will produce multi-faceted, hybrid pieces that will reflect different aesthetic and intellectual concerns and pay witness to distinct artistic processes; indeed, each piece will ‘come from different places’.