2026 WORLDWIDE OPEN CALL
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This year’s theme, “Aegean Futures / Echoes from the Pelago Ahead” calls for speculative, critical and poetic responses to the evolving realities of the Mediterranean world, its ecologies, histories, mythologies and geopolitical dynamics. We are interested in artistic practices that explore the sea not only as geography, but as metaphor, frontier and channel of transformation.
We invite artists, thinkers, researchers and hybrid practitioners to engage with the Aegean as a space of becoming, a fluid archive, a networked imaginary, a post-geographic portal to emergent narratives set in the coastal city of Kavala, where the edge of the European continent meets the shifting currents of the Pelago.
We are particularly interested in proposals that explore:
- Meta-narratives of migration, ecology and myth
- Post-disciplinary and transmedia approaches to storytelling
- Immersive environments, soundscape and speculative design
- Sea-as-interface: maritime imaginaries, liquid borders, and coastal futures
- Relational aesthetics, interspecies thinking and eco-somatic practices
This year’s residency is self-guided and unsupervised with no formal curation, so it can give you space to work at your own pace and offer you the freedom to shape your time on your own terms. There is no schedule but your own, no program but the one you carry with you. unsupervised residency with no formal curation or programming. Think of it as a creative retreat, an opportunity to immerse yourself in your practice while enjoying the beauty and rhythm of a Mediterranean vacation.
This residency seeks to host critical and experimental projects across visual arts, media arts, performance, sound art, writing, architecture, design, photography, film, collage, new media, hybrid practicesand everything in-between that engage with:
- Oceanic thinking and maritime imaginaries
- Climate change, displacement and border ecologies
- Myth-making, memory and layered temporalities
- Future storytelling, imaginary states, post-national identities and interspecies dialogues
Participants will have time and space to develop on their own new work in dialogue with Kavala’s topography, local communities and the shifting cultural landscapes of the wider Mediterranean.
Come create where the land meets the water.
Where the mythic and the digital collide.
Where echoes become signals from the Pelago ahead.
Set in a former tobacco town overlooking the Aegean, the residency offers time, space and community for artists to reflect, research, and create amidst a landscape shaped by currents.
The open call theme is not restrictive, instead it works as a basic concept for artists to freely explore, research and express their own impressions and ideas during their residency from their experience of living in an always evolving Mediterannean urban city by the Aegean sea.
Our program offers artists a unique opportunity to spend their time creatively on their own and dive deeply into their creative process while connecting with a community of fellow makers, thinkers and cultural practitioners. Set in a landscape where coastal charm meets mountain majesty and where urban energy blends seamlessly with rural rhythms, this residency provides the ideal backdrop for reflection, experimentation and exchange.
Beyond the studio, you can plan on your own:
- Visits to historic sites, museums, and local creative studios
- Excursions to natural landscapes, islands, and hidden cultural gems
- Opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and dialogue with local and visiting artists
Nekubi Art Residency, El. Venizelou 79, Kavala - Greece