Borderland Residencies 2024

Ludwig Forum Aachen is pleased to be part of the transnational network program Borderland Residencies for the second time and to welcome the artist and filmmaker Ayo Akingbade as well as the collective Apparatus 22 as their artist-in-residence at the museum this year. In addition to providing financial support for the scholarships, short-term artistic interventions and co-productions, the program also offers the opportunity to all fellows for professional and transnational networking, for deepening their own artistic practice, and opportunities to present work throughout the Euregion.

This year, Ludwig Forum Aachen welcomes two fellows as part of its cooperation with Borderland Residencies. Over the course of three months, London-based artist and filmmaker Ayo Akingbade as well as the Brussels- und Bucharest-based collective Apparatus 22 will focus on their current researches, delving into the specific context of the city and its surrounding region as well as the museum itself.

Ayo Akingbade works predominantly with film and installation to address themes of power, urbanism, and stance. Her work has often documented experiences of rapid social change in London, where she was born and raised. Moving between experimental film essays, documentaries, and more traditional narrative, she grounds her practice in a commitment to radical storytelling. Akingbade is particularly interested in looking at the dissonances that emerge between self-presentation and self-fashioning and recently has explored this in self-portraiture and printmaking. Her work has recently been shown at Barbican Centre, London and International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her first major institutional solo exhibition, Show Me The World Mister, opened at Chisenhale Gallery, London in November 2022 and is touring until 2024, venues include Spike Island, Bristol and the Whitworth, University of Manchester.

Ayo Akingbade’s residency will start in mid-September this year. For the following three months, she will be delving into Aachen’s history of thermal springs and water ecology to aid her research for a screenplay.

Apparatus 22 (RO/BE/Suprainfinit utopian realm) is a collective of daydreamers, citizens of many realms, researchers, poetic activists and (failed) futurologists founded in January 2011 by current members Erika Olea, Maria Farcas, Dragos Olea together with Ioana Nemeș (1979 – 2011) in Bucharest, Romania. Since early 2015 they have been working between Bucharest, Brussels and SUPRAINFINIT utopian universe. In their very diverse works – installations, performances, text based-shapes –, reality is mixed with fiction and storytelling and merge with a critical approach drawing knowledge and experiences from design, sociology, literature and economics. Fueled by the very specific context of Ludwig Forum Aachen, Apparatus 22 collective will work on a set of major questions in their long-term Positive Tension (in the air) series during the residency, aiming to open critical conversations and peculiar thinking, daydreaming and changing processes about art institutions. From September 15, 2024 through March 15, 2025, each of the collective’s members will stay for one month at Ludwig Forum Aachen.

The work of Apparatus 22 was presented in numerous exhibitions among others at La Biennale di Venezia 2013 (IT), Kunsthalle Wien (AT), Museion, Bolzano (IT), TRIUMF AMIRIA. Museum of Queer Culture (RO), CIVA, Brussels (BE), MUMOK, Vienna (AT), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (DE), Ujazdowski Castle – CCA, Warsaw (PL), Survival Kit Festival, LCCA Riga (LV), Autostrada Bienniale Prizren (XK), TIME MACHINE BIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, D-0 ARK UNDERGROUND, Konji (BIH), and recently in SMAK Gent (BE), Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (DE), Contemporary Art Museum (MNAC), Bucharest (RO), Kunsthalle Mannheim (DE), Contemporary Art Museum Roskilde (DK), West, Den Hague (NL), and Kunsthal Gent (BE).