This year's last foreign residency at the Arts Printing House, and from September 12 to 18 there is the TAAT collective, which creates ecological installations in public spaces! TAAT, together with Lithuanian artist Kipras Dubauskas and Vilnius Tech, is creating an ecological installation on the Neris River!

A presentation of the results of the residency will take place on Saturday, September 17, at 8 p.m., at the Arts Printing House Studio II.

What is your project about?

Our residency entails a workshop/lab focussed on the development of the HALL09 project (2022-2025). HALL09 is an ecologically developed art installation that invites for encounters between human and other-than-human entities. HALL09 is part of TAAT's long-term research project HALL33 and is building a network of 'encounter portals' that are being developed in Ghent (BE), Akniste (LV), Athens (GR) and Landgraaf (NL). The project is part of a global movement for 'non-extractive architecture' that aims to design without depleting human, natural and cultural 'resources'.

How was the idea born?

HALL09 is part of the longterm project HALL33, which is generating experiences that question or generate new ways of co-existence in our planet. TAAT’s regenerative design approach aims to restore a holistic awareness of non-human entities. This approach helps us shape the future by recognizing and enhancing biodiversity, cultural diversity and neurodiversity. TAAT is interested in how ‘performance scores’ inform their installation works. Therefor TAAT produces embodied experiences for designers, students and the general public alike. These are 'staged embodied encounters' that generate a critical awareness of our human-centered position in the world and propose alternative ways of coexistence.

Who are the partners, and what’s their role?

We are engaging in partnership with Kipras Dubauskas (curator of the Blackberry Island project, project site), Arts Printing House (7-day residency) and VTU (open call for students and designers). The project involves a human co-creation process in collaboration with the island’s ecosystem. Craft and weaving techniques are explored to shape a dialogic material process, through workshops by Egle Bazaraite (architect and craftswoman), Amandine David (designer), Goda Verikaite (designer) and Efrosyini Tsiritaki (architect). The lab will focus on bio-based design methods with a site-specific and low-tech approach. TAAT implements performative work tools (silent walks, material dialogues) and scripting methodologies (instructions, reflection) to capture participants' changing relationship with non-human entities. The main focus point of the lab is to change our perception of these non-human actors, whom we often think of as 'material resources' rather than 'co- creators’. Goda Verikaite, Breg Horemans and Gert-Jan Stam (all three connected to the TAAT arts collective) are facilitating the process from a to z. Evelina Kvartunaite is engaged as TAAT’s regenerative manager.

What is the purpose of this residency?

The residency emerges as a joint learning trajectory that disseminates the research results to the artistic and practice-oriented research community. By sharing experiences of non-extractive architecture and regenerative design across Europe, TAAT's work helps to change our people-centered design attitude to a regenerative and holistic approach. Other goals are:

• Development of a design strategy (script) for a site specific installation HALL09
• Development of a prototype for HALL09 (site specific intervention)
• Publish results and learnings (by a public presentation) throughout a local and international network
• Share results and learnings (through a small scale expo) to local visitors of Arts Printing House

What are your plans and hopes for this project?

TAAT strives for a fully regenerative design process: we develop HALL09 as an architecture that contributes to a healthy planet. HALL09 takes the form of a co-creation process involving designers, students and plants in a mutual and polyphonic dialogue. Together we aim to shift our awareness to the ecosystems we are (already) part of. We aim to re-connect our human bodies to our other-than-human environments.