Faces of HELLERAU – Janka Dold, Head of Residency Program
How long have you been working at HELLERAU and what are your responsibilities?
I have been working at HELLERAU since autumn 2022 as part of the programme team and I manage the international residency programme, which is an important pillar of our work alongside guest performances and co-productions. The apartments and rehearsal studios on our premises enable us to offer artists and groups from the fields of dance, performance, theatre, music and media art the opportunity for longer research processes. They can therefore performatively research and artistically experiment with us to find out where a project can lead. Or they can work specifically on a particular stage of a project.
I manage the programme in terms of curation, coordination and dramaturgy. In consultation with the programme team, I write open calls, select artists, develop thematic projects, apply for additional funding and maintain close contact with international partners. A central part of my work is the work with the artists themselves. I connect them with each other and with the local scene and support them dramaturgically through feedback sessions. Artist care is very important to me. Artists come to us from very different international contexts. It is essential to pay attention to needs, respond to questions and deal flexibly with emerging issues. It is important to me to take the pressure out of work processes. Residencies are not about showing a finished production to a large audience at the end, but about working on topics and aesthetics and supporting the process. Artistic research is comparable to scientific research. Sometimes something may not work, so you move on to something else. That’s the beauty of creative work: not always knowing what can actually happen and be created. The utopian vision of the residency programme is that different artists get to know each other, network and collaborate. To this end, we organise collective exchanges, joint visits and open studios where artists can present their work processes in a semi-public setting.
Why are residencies so important for artists?
Residencies are often about open-ended work, work processes, approaching new topics, networking and changing perspectives. Residencies support the beginnings of a work or longer research processes. Of course, that’s not enough for the entire development and production of an artistic work, but it is an important part of providing projects with financial means and resources from the very beginning, before rehearsals and production phases can begin. Sometimes artists also conduct performative research on topics over a long period of time without having a stage play as a result in mind. The research can, for example, become part of a discourse in workshops and discussion formats and trigger important impulses.
What were special experiences or challenges for you in HELLERAU?
The EU project ‘Moving Identities’ is very interesting in terms of international cooperation, but also challenging. We are working with six European partners for three years. What is nice about this project is that the artists are sent on a journey and research in different contexts. I also travel to the various residence locations for project development, so that we colleagues get to know each other well in the project and sustainable relationships develop. These are also important for HELLERAU for international networking, to get to know artists and to come into contact with new topics.
What do you wish for HELLERAU in the future?
In general, I would like to see better funding structures for artists and institutions like HELLERAU, because even production venues that feel responsible for the independent scene are dependent on the funding structures. I would like to see even more exchange with the Dresden audience. Working and living internationally is so important for all of us. Changes of perspective, contexts and encounters with people and topics shape artistic work and are also essential for a diverse urban society.
The conversation was conducted by Helene Lindicke and Henriette Roth