On In/determinability
(May 02-14, 2025)
Art and Research Residency In Kefalonia, Greece
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
(Albert Einstein[1])
The Real is the impossibility around which every symbolic order is structured; it is what the symbolic cannot cover, the rock upon which every consistent worldview stumbles. (Slavoj Žižek[2])
[1] Einstein, A. (1936). Physics and reality. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 221(3) https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-0032(36)91047-5. P.351.
[2] Žižek, S. (1989). The sublime object of ideology. Verso. P.171.
FACULTY
Kurtis Lesick is an artist, curator, researcher, and award-winning creative content specialist. His installations, media works, digital performances, and cross-media collaborations explore the limits of materiality, knowledge, and themes of indeterminabilty. Lesick’s practice draws heavily on his experience in archaeology, anthropology and philosophy, as well as both his love and disdain for technology. His work has been presented and exhibited internationally in Canada, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A. He is an Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts, has held an adjunct professorship at the Digital Futures Initiative in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (Canada), has been visiting faculty at the Banff Centre (Canada) and the University of California at Irvine (USA), and was a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol (UK).
Barbara Sutherland is an artist and educator working with fibre, sculpture, walking, and installation. She is particularly interested in the propositions of a priori, a posteriori, and topology as guides for explorations of being, material, and place. Recent investigations use plant fibres, natural dyes, and embedded linen string in handmade papers, the scale of the body, implicating a physical, sensorial response to the materials. The linen lines evoke animal tracks across land or human paths that defy designated routes—demonstrating an autonomous yearning, an illicit wandering or desire path. Barbara teaches at Alberta University of the Arts and has received numerous awards including Canada Council for the Arts: Research and Creation Grants, a SSHRC Graduate Scholarship and a Governor General’s Academic Medal. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, in Europe and Australia and she has worked in collaboration with other artists, writers and composers.
John Abram is a composer, performer, recording engineer, producer and educator. His worked which has been presented internationally, is indicative of his fascination of how the perception of time can be manipulated in music, how complex musical situations may be created using simple strategies, and how any kind of source material, by means of remediation through numbers, can be realised as music. John has taught at several Canadian universities, helped students aged 5 to 16 create operas, and has worked as a recording engineer, producer and in post-production audio for film and television. He has scored film soundtracks and written for many diverse orchestras, ensembles and soloists.
*Additional Faculty will be announced closer to the event.
PARTICIPANTS
Tomo Ingalls is a multidisciplinary artist with a foundation in traditional ceramic techniques and experience as a production potter. Her body understands the language of her hands through this training and the repetitive, intuitive production work processes. This embodied knowledge continues to shape her current practice, which explores the fluidity and vulnerability of identity. As an immigrant, mother, and daughter, Tomo investigates how identity shifts in response to environment, structure, and interaction. Using moulds of her body, she creates fragmented, abstracted clay forms that capture the tension between familiarity and transformation. Her work often incorporates raw clay and performance, inviting the material’s malleability and unpredictability to mirror the body’s fluidity. Tomo earned an MFA in Craft Media in ceramics from Alberta University of the Arts in 2022. Her work has been solo exhibited in Matter/ing (MFA Thesis Exhibition, 2022) and Hanging In at Medalta in Medicine Hat, Alberta (2023). Through installations and performances, Tomo invites audiences to witness identity as a dynamic, relational process shaped by material interactions and the spaces we inhabit.
Call for applications:
On In/determinability: Art and Speculative Ontology invites applications from experienced artists, researchers, curators, musicians/composers, writers, and grad students interested in questions of indeterminacy, contradiction, ambiguity, ontological incompleteness, chance, and randomness for a 12-day research residency at the Ionion Centre for the Arts and Culture in Kefalonia, Greece, from May 02-14, 2025.
Details:
The residency will consist of daily presentations, discussions, and relevant thematic shows, events, and explorations by guest faculty, daily work time for research creation, and some local excursions. The residency will culminate in a group show of artistic/academic outcomes at the Ionion Centre. Participants will be accommodated at the Ionion Centre, have access to a shared studio for production. Participants are responsible for their own supplies. In general, the working language is English.
Participants are also encouraged to apply in advance for extended residencies (under the terms and conditions for normal residencies) at the Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture where they can further pursue their individual research, artwork, or exhibit their work before or after our program. For more information on the Center’s residency program please see: https://www.ionionartscenter.gr/the-institution/residence-areas/ or email here: contact@ionionartscenter.gr.
Themes:
Since its inception western philosophy has been sparsely but consistently punctuated by thinkers who have characterised the world not as a noun, but as a verb—a roiling contradiction of flux and movement where things are “thinged” in the tension between agencies. From Heraclitus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Marcus Aurelius, to Hegel, Nietzsche, Bohr, Cage, Nancy, Žižek, and Barad, thinkers have questioned the model of the world as one of fixed substances and identities with enduring and ideal forms. This residency will work to open this conversation further and push the thinking through material and immaterial experimentation.
The Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture operates in a Global environment in the fields of Higher Education, Arts and Research. The Center is located on the Greek Island of Kefalonia with close proximity to the Kefalonia International Airport which provides easy access to the island by flight from most major European cities after May 1st.
PLEASE NOTE - All applicants for Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture programs must complete tax registration as part of their applications. For more information on the program and the registration process please contact: info@ionionartscenter.gr.
To Apply:
Web application: http://goo.gl/forms/q2f8aD9uzk
Email application: info@ionionartscenter.gr
Deadlines for applications
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Early Bird registrations: March 30th, 2025
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Final Deadlines for applications – registrations: April 10th, 2025
Contact & Information (submissions, fees, grants info): info@ionionartscenter.gr
Program Information: contact@ionionartscenter.gr
IONION CENTRE SUBMISSIONS POLICY, TERMS, CONDITIONS, FEES
The program is under the character of an academic course is granted a partial scholarship 40% off the normal fees (details below)
General information
Application is required through email: info@ionionartscenter.gr
Information in word document is required:
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Full name of the applicant, copy of passport (which is used for supporting documents and visas), postal address, phone, country , email address, web site(if available), profession, discipline , short description of the plan and expectations of the participant, no longer than 100 words , short cv no longer than 200 words (all in word documents suitable for promotion, catalogue editing , press release etc).
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In the case of group /collective project( group -school- organization) a title for the group is required –school or organization, full name of the person representing -or leading- the group , postal address, phone, country , email address, web site(if available) of the group -school- organization , short description of the group expectations, no longer than 100 words, short cv of every group member no longer than 200words (all in word documents).
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1-3 still images (jpg form) of the artists’ works and free accessible web- links in case of music, performing works, film works/new technologies /video art.
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Every submission / formal application towards being eligible must refer to the specific program and/or activity.
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Every submission must contain a FORMAL non-refundable tax registration fee of euro 150 due with the application(PAYPAL account: info@ionionartscenter.gr)
Each application under consideration must be formally completed with the following:
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Short submission notice -3 lines max - addressed via email: info@ionionartscenter.gr /or/ ionionartscenter@gmail.com
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Transfer confirmation of the entry fee payment euro 150, for every separate application (usual payment method is PAYPAL: info@ionionartscenter.gr). In the case of any difficulties in paying through PAYPAL, the applicant must inform the Center.
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All the information/documents of the paragraphs 2 &3 (above).
NOTICE: Applications/submissions which are not formally registered with the tax registration fee paid, can NOT be accepted. Please note: ONLY formally registered participations (with confirmed tax payments will be granted the attention and will be considered for the grant.
FEES
ENTRY/TAX REGISTRATION FEES FOR EVERY APPLICANT:
1) nonrefundable EURO 150, PLUS
2) PARTICIPATION FEES PER PARTICIPANT, (UNDER GRANT 40%) TOTAL FEES EURO 1130 (main reduced operational fees and 24% tax fees in full inclusive –all services included, course expenses, fees and taxes plus full housing accommodation (please see more details below).
PAYMENT METHODS
150 euro tax registration /entry fee due with the application (payment method is PAYPAL: info@ionionartscenter.gr).
Course main fees 1130 euro due (4) weeks before the class (payment methods and accounts will be available on the invoices (payment flexibility applies upon request )
INCLUDED IN THE FEES: 24% taxes, course expenses - tuition fees, full housing accommodation, Inclusive: breakfast, dinner, snacks, coffee, refreshments available 24 hours a day, internet, free use of the Ionion Center professional facilities, fully equipped auditorium and exhibition hall for educational, creation, exhibition needs, personal support, / guidance, official opening- reception expenses.
NOTE: If a personal room or partner inclusion in the accommodation is required an additional fee -beyond the program costs- for a single room is an extra 30 euro per day, for double room an extra 50 euro per day. Spouses and families are welcome, in agreement with the Center (email:ionionartscenter@gmail.com).
In the dates of arrivals-departures applies a day flexibility upon request (if space availability allows).
Bomi Yook is a Korean-Canadian artist based in Calgary, working in immersive multimedia, experimental animation, and video performance. Her work explores hybridity within identity, cultural landscapes, and knowledge systems, often drawing on the collective memory of the Korean Diaspora, with its complex ties to immigration and colonization. Yook received her MFA from UCLA, where she developed community-driven research projects on Decolonial Poetics, collaborating with artists and designers from BIPOC and Indigenous communities to mobilize creative practice in solidarity with local decolonial movements. Commissioned by the City of West Hollywood, Yook’s video art was showcased at the Moving Image Media Art public art screen operated by Netflix situated in the cultural hub of Sunset Boulevard. In 2023, Yook was honored with the Emerging Digital Artist Award and an exhibition in Toronto at the Trinity Video Square through the support of EQ Bank. In 2024, she was awarded the Explore & Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to research the violent legacy of Japanese colonialism and the decolonial movement of the Korean diaspora. Yook has collaborated with prominent museums, archives, and activist groups, including the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum, the Museum of Forced Mobilization History, the Justice Memory Solidarity Foundation, the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization, and the People’s Archive of Japanese Colonial History.
Patrick Moskwa is an award-winning artist, architect, and educator in Calgary, Canada. His sculpture and performance work challenges our common assumptions of architecture - interrogating a material’s relationship with its embedded semiotics. His cross-disciplinary collaborations violate materiality and form to construct new architectures between bodies (human and otherwise). Moskwa’s architectural works, lectures, publications and exhibitions have been presented throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. He is an instructor at Mount Royal University, teaching Creativity and Design, and has delivered lectures at Alberta University of the Arts, Concordia University, and OCAD University. Moskwa has participated in international courses, and residencies and was trained under esteemed award-winning artists, and architects from around the world.”
Nazli Ghassemi has collaborated internationally and locally with artists, art-related projects and curatorial practices, exhibition proposals and writings, video performance, installation, exhibition reviews, translation, poetry, essays and brochure statements. Her writings have appeared in art publications: Artforum, Hyperallergic, Carnegie International Magazine, Elephant Magazine, and Modern Painters among others. Her novel, Desert Mojito, was published in 2013. She has lived and traveled extensively in America, Europe, and the Middle East. She is the founder of ARTexTalk, a contemporary arts and culture agency focused on writing, reporting and documenting art.
Tom Roach is Professor of philosophy and queer studies at Bryant University in Rhode Island, USA. He is the author of two monographs, both published by State University of New York Press: Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS, and the Politics of Shared Estrangement (2012) and Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era (2021). He is currently writing a new monograph, tentatively titled The Joy, Pain, and Politics of Queer Friendship, which explores the ethical and political stakes of the complex affective entanglements emergent in the dissolution of the friend/lover binary. Roach is also a musician, whose recorded output spans the art punk of Lifter Puller, the brooding film scores of Le Feeling, and the luminous darkwave of Wolfgang Tillmans.
Irene Theotokatou is an actor-director, writer and artist. Born in Kefalonia, she was raised in Zimbabwe and studied theatre in South Africa and the U.K. In Greece, she worked in children's theatre, both for entertainment and in education. She co-founded Sirens, a bilingual theatre company that created and performed work on relevant issues. These included Athol Fugard’s “The Island”, Franca Rama inspired “Medea, Medea” and “Amazons”, a devised work about women and breast cancer. She taught acting, mask-work and voice, focusing on Ancient Greek Tragedy. Her commitment is to a theatre that challenges and empowers both the audience and the practitioners. She writes short fiction and creative non-fiction (and even has a novel in a drawer somewhere, like any ‘sane’ writer should). In recent years she has been writing poetry, almost exclusively. As an artist she works mostly with collage, but has recently rediscovered painting.