5 funding measures to support the production phase

Open twice a year, artists, photographers and architects interested in creating new projects in all areas of the visual arts can find support via the measure ‘production grant’.

Calls are open from: 1 January – 1 March 2025 or 1 July – 1 September 2025

In 2024, the artist Samuel Haitz received a production grant to create ‘Anthology (Rimbaud)’, a photo-collage of Kathy Acker’s narrative of Rimbaud and Verlaine. By scanning the texts, highlighting some parts, adding personal annotations and his own photographs, Haitz was able to link the two narratives that seemed unrelated together with his own autobiographical and auto-fictional elements, creating a fiction within the fiction.

Samuel Haitz uses the concept of the anthology as an artistic medium: instead of compiling a collection of texts as the term suggests, he used different sources, among them text and images for his anthology. By transforming his collages, again, into images by scanning – a light sensitive technique such as photography itself – he proposes a subtle, yet sensitive reflexion on mediality itself.

Open twice a year, the ‘grant for production with presentation’ helps artists, photographers and architects to create and present new artworks in all areas of the visual arts that are being presented for the first time. The support aims to produce projects planned for exhibitions.

Calls are open from: 1 January – 1 March 2025 or 1 July – 1 September 2025

In 2024, Chloé Delarue received a grant for production with presentation to create ‘TAFAA-SIGNAL (Ice Cream so good)’ for the 3^rd edition of Klöntal Triennale. Taking place at the Legler industrial area, this edition invited artists to reflect on the history of industrial culture, global capitalism, (post-)colonial entanglements and on the ongoing changes of globalisation and digitalisation, as well as evoking possible futures.

Delarue tackled the theme by addressing the neon advertising sign of the 20^th century as a mean of translation, interpretation and symbolic formalization in relation to automated image generated by AIs. Produced entirely in neon lights with a metal structure holding them, the artwork is visible both day and night, and depending on the surrounding luminosity it will glow differently.

Open all year-around, the measure ‘photographic publication’ supports photographers (as well as duos and collectives) with the creation of either an analogue or digital publication of their work, that has not been yet published. Participants can delve into artistic, documentary and/or applied photography projects which need to be (co-)published by a professional publishing house or other publishing institution with cross-regional reach.

Recently, the following eight artists received a support to publish their photographic publication:

• Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, ‘Rough Tide’ Edition Fink 
• Delphine Burtin, ‘Géométrie du rocher’, Haus am Gern 
• Yann Mingard, ‘Indociles’, GwinZegal 
• Lucas Olivet, ‘Medicine Tree’, Skinnerboox 
• Bianca Pedrina, ‘Architekturfotografie II’, Mark Pezinger Books 
• Ronald Pizzoferrato, ‘Mi Perro’, Artphilein 
• Jean-Vincent Simonet, ‘Kitengela’, Mousse Publishing 
• Corinne Vionnet, ‘Paris Paris Paris’, RVB Books

These publications were also selected by the association Spectrum – Photgraphy in Switzerland who organised in collaboration with Pro Helvetia and Centre Culturel Suisse a presentation of photo books in presence of the artists during Paris Photo 2024.

The measure ‘Focus Photo’ supports photographers and artists to produce new photographic projects based on a specific focus which is defined anew every year in consultation with a group of experts. Participants can explore their project thematically, but also through artistic practice or creative processes. This measure offers a targeted support, while encouraging debates on key issues in the field of contemporary photography.

Calls are open from: 1 July – 1 September 2025

In 2023, the focus was ‘Photographic Uncertainties’ which delve into the ever-changing creation of images: be it with new types of cameras and camera equipment, computers, or artificial intelligence software. Contemporary photography is faced with some uncertainties that sometimes even question the very longevity of the medium.

With ‘Take Your Life in Your Own Hands’, Mindaugas Matulis tackled the theme by dealing with modern ideas of success, belonging, and material wealth. Recent phenomena on social media platforms, like Instagram and Tik Tok, show how younger generations present themselves as successful business people by engaging with stocks and cryptocurrencies. Through his photography, Matulis reflects on their exuberant dreams and insecurities driven by digital promises of success.

The measure ‘Perform!‘ supports visual artists and collectives who want to professionalise, deepen and broaden their performance practice, for example by transforming their performance practice from art space to stage, by broadening their practice to video performances or into the digital space.

‘Perform!’ will reopen in 2026. Performance projects can also apply to our two support measures: ‘production grant’ and ‘grant for production with presentation’, that are open either from 1 January – 1 March 2025 or 1 July – 1 September 2025.

With this support measure, the collective ‘nSchuppel was able in 2024 to professionalise its performance practice developed around Vanessà Heer’s artistic research ‘Scheerenschnitt in die erste Helligkeit’. The project deals with the relation between self, space and sound, as well as folklore practices.

The support measure helped the collective to create high quality costumes, masks and an audiovisual installation to accompany the performance, as well as to further develop the practice with sessions joined by experts to fully understand the multi-layered facets of performance and the relation of body/sound in space.