SPACE 2025: EXPERIENCE DESIGN IN ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
The Performance Corporation’s SPACE Programme is Ireland’s longest-running International Multi-Disciplinary Artists Residency. It brings together adventurous artists from diverse disciplines for 10 days of intensive collaborative and creative experimentation.
SPACE is an opportunity for artists to develop their practice in new ways, dive into exciting collaborations across disciplines and discover new creative horizons without the pressure of creating a finished work. Participants will stay and work in the heart of Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais.
Our focus for 2025 invites applications from artists and creatives interested in working in Analogue and Digital Experience Design. The residency is designed for those with experience of working in the arts and tech field. It combines the creative freedom of traditional artistic residencies with the energised innovation of a tech hackathon.
Deadline for applications is 23:00 (Irish time) on Saturday March 1st 2025
2025 Objectives
- To focus on Research and Development: exploring interdisciplinary collaboration without the pressure to present a finished output.
- To build and facilitate International Networking.
- To explore shaping audience experiences in multi-sensory, multi-dimensional, interactive spaces at the intersection of the analogue and digital.
- To encourage diverse artistic voices
Residency Experience in Paris
Combining Creative Freedom with Technological Innovation.
Our unique residency merges the creative freedom of traditional artistic residencies with the energised innovation characteristic of a tech ‘Hackathon’. This 10-day programme in Paris offers access to one of the world’s best cities as part of The SPACE Programme 2025. We aim to provide a nurturing environment for artists from all art forms including Theatre, Visual Arts, Sound, Dance, Music and Digital Arts. The programme offers opportunities to experiment with various technologies, delving into their potential to redefine artistic expression.
Interactive Meet-ups and Collaborations.
Our approach is further enriched by interactive meet-ups and structured encounters with leading artistic practitioners and presenters in the field of hybrid arts experiences transgressing virtual and real space. These professional encounters and collaborations are designed to facilitate idea exchange, networking, and learning opportunities, allowing participants to engage with, and gain insights from, established artists and technologists.
Exploring Artistic Expression in the Digital Age.
Outcomes will include enhanced competence in interdisciplinary collaboration, experience design and interactivity, immersive and digital technologies and their processes. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of varied artistic ecologies, and enriched collaboration and innovation skills as well as potential future collaborators. This blend of experimentation, professional interaction, and collaborative exploration forms the core of The SPACE Programme 2025, fostering a dynamic environment for creative growth and innovation.
Partnership with Digital Arts Festivals BETA (Dublin) and NEMO (Paris)
We are partnering with the BETA Digital Arts Festival in Dublin and NEMO biennial festival Paris as part of the programme this year to create a pathway for participants to present work alongside bespoke networking opportunities as part of the festival.
Our Team
Created and led by The Performance Corporation. Facilitated and curated Jo Mangan and Hanna Slättne, with technical support led by Guillaume Auvray. Supported by the Centre Culturel Irlandais.
The SPACE Programme: A Legacy of Innovation
Since 2008, 10+ Irish and International artists each year have benefitted from The SPACE Programme – Ireland’s longest-running International Multi-Disciplinary Artists Residency. The SPACE Programme ethos does not require finished works to be generated as part of the residency. Each year however sees connections made and learnings that accelerate ideation, often resulting in works being presented subsequently. We experience vastly different outcomes based on the unique combination of art forms, artists, and since 2018 additional technological explorations.
Eligibility
Open to artists and creatives who have experience of working across digital, and immersive technologies and who want to extend its application in their work through collaboration with other artforms in the creation of a range of artistic audience experiences.
You should also have a commitment to exploring how these technologies can expand and intersect with traditional artistic practices as well as an interest in joining a diverse, interdisciplinary group of creatives in Paris this Summer.
This residency prioritises collaborative work rather than individual, pre-existing projects.
Please note the programme is fully immersive. Please ensure you are available the entirely of the dates: arrival in Paris by afternoon of Friday 18th July and departing Monday 28th July.
What We Provide: Travel, Accommodation, and Technology
- Access to expertise, technology, resources and spaces in which to work collaboratively.
- Travel, Accommodation and meals.
Selection
- Applications reviewed by a panel from The Performance Corporation, the Centre Culturel Irlandais, and external assessors.
- Shortlisted candidates may be invited for further discussion.
Contact Information:
For queries, please contact info@theperformancecorporation.com
PRESENTED BY – The Performance Corporation
FUNDED BY – International Residencies Initiative from The Arts Council of Ireland
PARTNERS: Centre Cultural Irlandais, Department of Foreign Affairs, The Irish Embassy in Paris, Kildare Co Council, BETA Festival.
SPACE is a creative melting pot that offers an opportunity not only to expand your own practice and process, but to step out of it entirely, exploring new ways of making and being an artist.
– Caoimhe Wandel-Brannigan [Dance VR/AR/MR]
Access to mixed reality technology is prohibitively expensive for independent artists. This programme created a structured collaborative environment with state-of-the-art equipment backed up by technical experts, removing a huge barrier for entry into creative applications for VR/AR and kickstarting a whole series of artistic collaborations.
– Hugh Farrell [Writer, producer, dramaturg – immersive experiences / live events]
“Aaaaaaaaaghhhh such a great experience to connect people from very different disciplines at the intersections between our work. Like bashing atoms together in a super collider, to create weird and otherwise improbable new things.”
– Ciara Tamay [UX Designer – Virtual Reality / Virtual Experiences]
SPACE Programme helped me discover new ways of being cooperative, letting the other mindsets fulfill my needs and wants. This kind of programme is essential in a divided world, both by cultural issues and user-centered technologies. I think that more of this form of programme would benefit a kind of Artistic European construction. It feels like permaculture for artists.
– Thomas Coispel [Video artist]
As a collaborative theatre maker who strives to create live immersive experiences, the chance to spend time learning and upskilling in the most up to date immersive technology, to experiment and play has been so inspiring. The networks and connections I’ve made both nationally and internationally are brilliant, along with feeling much more confident about where my practice can and will meet the digital world.”
– James Riordan [Writer & Theatre Maker]
“The SPACE Programme was absolutely one of the best experiences I have had as a new media artist. With technology changing so fast it is very easy to feel overwhelmed. Having a space to just play and explore without any pressure is an immensely important opportunity for artists. I wish there were more residencies like that.” –
– Isa Juchniewicz [ Visual Artist – New Media/Performance Art ]
THE SPACE PROGRAMME
The SPACE Programme is a professional development residency for artists and creative technologists with a focus on collaboration across form and medium. This highly successful residency has been delivered by The Performance Corporation in Ireland since 2008. Artists are given the opportunity to explore, re-examine and extend working practices, processes, ideas, partnerships and collaborations without pressure to create ‘product’ within a fixed time frame.
Since 2018, The SPACE Programmes has had a specific focus on augmented, mixed and virtual reality technologies, as well as binaural sound exploration, Motion Capture and more; allowing the artists involved to develop skills in storytelling and immersive interaction in these new and exciting media.
In 2023 we first brought The SPACE Programme to Paris and to the Centre Culturel Irlandais.
As well as hands-on work with the technology on offer, guest facilitators, artists and cultural leaders from France and further afield guide the professional development and inter-disciplinary collaborations. Participants engage with local artists, programmers and cultural leaders, with the aim of engaging with different cultural and artistic contexts, thus opening up new creative horizons and allowing for new connections and collaborations.
BACKGROUND
Since 2008 The Performance Corporation has created an opportunity for artists of all disciplines to come together for an intensive residency of collaborative, creative experimentation. The residency gives participants space to connect and collaborate with a wide range of creatives from different backgrounds, challenge and develop their personal artistic practice, experiment with new ideas and forms, explore the potential of new technology in artistic creation. SPACE is an opportunity to explore what happens when artists have space to experiment without the expectation of delivery.
This opportunity is being offered at a time when immersive tech is revolutionising human connection, the imagination, and how we express ourselves. As corporate interests actively seek dominance of the VR world, there is an urgent need for artists and creatives to carve out a distinctive virtual space where individual creativity can flourish unmediated by the big names of the tech world. SPACE seeks to foster a spirit of independent artistic exploration in this rapidly developing field.
The residency for artists working in the realm of immersive technology is the closest thing in the arts to a tech ‘Hackathon’. It will be designed and led by The Performance Corporation director Jo Mangan, dramaturg and facilitator Hanna Slättne and Technical Facilitator Guillaume Auvray.
Over the past 17 years over 100 artists from all over the world have benefitted from the SPACE programme. Each year’s outcome has been vastly different due to the hugely varied alignments of artforms, artists and interrogations involved.
The consistent takeaway for participants has been that they have gained new expertise and understanding of the different ecologies we are all part of, a deeper knowledge of different work practices as well as new connections. Participants leave with stronger starting points from which to initiate and facilitate collaboration, innovation and new idea generation.