Tentacular Fellowship

Conceived as a long-term platform for artistic research and ecological engagement, Ocean Space is working to develop new forms of action capable of moving beyond awareness-raising to produce real, tangible territorial effects. This can only happen through situated collaboration with the communities, practitioners, researchers, and civic actors already working within this environment and deeply familiar with its ecological, social, and cultural complexity.

To this end, TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities at Ca' Foscari University and the Unesco Chair on Water, Heritage and Sustainable Development, is launching the first edition of the Tentacular Fellowship, a two-year Fellowship based at Ocean Space in Venice and at Ca’ Foscari. This initiative-building fellowship is designed to support experimental and community-driven practices capable of activating regenerative processes with a tangible ecosocial impact for the Lagoon of Venice.

The Fellowship invites a practitioner or collective to initiate, consolidate, or expand a situated initiative in the Lagoon through the creation of a Tentacular Unit: a collaborative interdisciplinary platform that would ideally be able to gather together artists, students, researchers, institutions, local communities, and other actors around a specific socio-environmental challenge.

Through situated research, alliance-building, and public-facing formats, the fellow will help to build the social, institutional, and ecological conditions for the initiative to take root and grow over time. Ocean Space will support this process by making its resources, spaces, and institutional networks available to the fellow, who can use them to develop the initiative through research, programming, and spatial activation.

Find details on the application process, evaluation criteria, and frequently asked questions in the full open call document.