Alongside the Swiss Selection Edinburgh 2022 programme we will also continue with our successful virtual residency programme, connecting Swiss artists with UK arts organisations. Previously we have supported residencies with The Royal Court, Mayfest & LIFT festival, to name just a few and supported artists have included Monika Truong, Ntando Cele & K7 Productions.  

This year we will be supporting Criptonite, Brandy Butler and Camilla Parini to undertake a week’s virtual residency developing their work and practice with the support of three UK arts organisations.  

Criptonite will be working with Dada Fest between the 13th – 17th June to develop a new piece exploring pleasure. DaDa is an award-winning organisation based in Liverpool with international reach that pioneers excellence in disability, Deaf and neurodiverse arts. 

 «Criptonite is a queer-crip theatre project. As two self-identified disabled, queer artists we use it to give a platform to other, emerging disabled artists and to engage with questions around access, interdependence and bodily autonomy. Our aesthetic is very DIY and informed by cripness, drag and pop culture. We put on themed shows that use satire as well as lived experience to explore themes relevant to us, examples being superpowers and inspiration or our affinity for slow animals. »

Edwin Ramirez and Nina Muehlemann from Criptonite are both performance artists based in Zurich. Although neither of them has had formal arts training Edwin was able to bring in his experiences as a stand-up comedian, while Nina Mühlemann in her knowledge of disability rights. 

Brandy Butler will undertake a residency in September 2022 with Marlborough Productions.

Brandy Butler was originally born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania. Daughter to a black father and white mother she was born into a world full of cultural intersections. Since 2015, Butler’s career has expanded immensely. Her current professional practice of being a member of the ensemble of Theater Neumarkt (2019 – present) has broadened her professional capabilities, bearing her the more current title of Contemporary Arts Performer. Whether on the European theatrical stage at the Zürcher Schauspielhaus or Münchener Kammerspiele, internationally acclaimed musical stages such as the Montreux Jazz Fest or even a living room concert, Brandy Butler delights wherever she performs. 

Camilla Parini will undertake a residency in October 2022 with Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT) to do research for her new piece reflecting personal and national identity and its vulnerability. The festival supports artists at all stages of their careers, enabling them to use GIFT as a space to come together, to take risks, and test out new ideas.  

Camilla Parini (1984) was born and grew up in a small village in the Italian part of Switzerland, where she still lives. She is introverted, messy and in constant conflict with the use of words. 

Her first studies and her first work experiences were in the social field, fascinated above all by the relationship with people who read the world and express themselves through other mental and perceptive patterns. She moved to Milan to study dance-theatre, a practice that to this day she is not yet able to define and perhaps not even to understand, but that was the starting point to begin to construct/deconstruct her own personal artistic research. She is co-founder of Collettivo Treppenwitz (2018) and co-creator of the movement Ticino is burning (2021).