Avanzada
Sur 2025

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Avanzada Sur is a live arts residency and mentoring program for young artists from Latin America.

Hereafter, we will refer to it as the "Program." It is an initiative led by the Cuerpo Sur Foundation. Its 2023 and 2024 editions have been held in a hybrid format, with in-person residencies in Chile and digital seminars. It is a free program and is aimed at artists from the live arts in Latin America.

Avanzada Sur offers a year-long opportunity for participants to develop a project that they want to work on and explore in depth, especially in the research, creation, management, and dissemination stages.

Through Avanzada Sur, we aim to provide practical and theoretical tools that strengthen the authorship of each participant, promoting an ongoing dialogue between the artists, the creative team, and the community surrounding the territories of Chiloé and Valparaíso.

The program is primarily practical in nature and focuses on promoting interdisciplinary dialogues based on knowledge and practices from the Global South, prioritizing our interpretation of the world over that of the Global North.

In this context, we seek to blur the boundaries between artistic disciplines and strengthen the creative perspectives of those who participate, affirming, recognizing, and valuing Latin American diversity through dialogues between different knowledge, rituals, experiences, perceptions, languages, and cultures, to empower creativity in Latin America.

Dirigido a:

Latin American artists working in the Performing Arts* within Latin America, residing in a Latin American country, who as of the date of this call are under 35 years of age (born after 1990) and who have - at least - 1 professional work exhibited and a maximum of 3.

"1 professional work exhibited and a maximum of 3" means: plays, performances, choreography, or the combination of the performing arts with other disciplines such as music, film, architecture, visual arts, philosophy, gastronomy, carpentry, etc. "Graduation works from a bachelor's degree or participation as an interpreter in works by other directors are not considered as professional works exhibited.

Through the application process, a jury convened by the Cuerpo Sur Foundation will select six Latin American artists. They must have verifiable residency in a Latin American country for a minimum of three years at the time of application. A minimum of 70% of the full team will be considered for selection: cis women, trans identities, and non-binary identities.

Avanzada Sur is an inclusive program and extends this call to all Latin American artists under the age of 35 of diverse ethnic origins, with a plurality of physical and cultural characteristics.

Each year, the program's curatorship is guided by certain essential guidelines established by the Cuerpo Sur Foundation. These themes serve as a framework for the call for proposals and selection of participants. In 2025, the axes and perspectives that will guide the call for proposals are:

Axes:

Decoloniality and ancestral knowledge
Ecology and relationship with other kingdoms; Kingdom Plantae; Kingdom Animalia; Kingdom Fungi; Kingdom Monera; and Kingdom Protista.

Approaches / methodologies:

Feminist practices and perspectives.
Collaborative practices, linking between

art and territory.
Practices that link art, science and technology.

Artists/creators/directors with an established artistic and/or social practice will not be selected. We are specifically interested in applicants who are just beginning their artistic journey.

Details
from the Program:

The residency program seeks to support creative processes and will be developed in the format of three in-person residencies during the months of March, September, and December 2025. Each residency will last 21 days. During this residency period, the selected artists will participate in workshops taught by internationally renowned artists, share their practice with the community, and have the space and time to explore and develop their artistic process in Chiloé and Valparaíso.

They will participate in at least six creative seminars throughout the year, led by artists with distinguished international careers, mostly Latin American, and/or with a focus on the epistemologies of the South.

Program details and what it offers to artists:

Tutor who will accompany your creative process until December 2025.
Consulting on the creation, theoretical research, management, and internationalization of your project throughout the year.
During the months when there are no group residencies in Chile, in addition to the digital follow-up provided by the tutor, students will be invited to weekly theoretical sessions in digital format during certain periods.
For our Foundation, it is important that residents connect with the community and the area where the seminars will take place. Therefore, we will encourage interaction with local artists and cultural agents, as well as with community art initiatives and regional cultural associations, within the activities. These are defined according to the residents' interests and the lines of work of their projects.
Each resident will receive a grant of $1,000,000 Chilean pesos , which they can use freely for their creative process. These funds will be distributed in two installments, subject to the signing of a notarized document: the first installment in September and the second in December. The funds are budgeted for the project, not for the participant's living expenses.

This program is an initiative of the Cuerpo Sur Foundation and does not aim for a final result; in other words, a premiere is not expected. The program's emphasis is on developing an artistic research process. Throughout the program, you will be invited to open this process to the public at various times, so that the relationship with the public is also part of the exploration process.
A launch event for all program projects will be held in Castro at the end of 2025. This event will seek to connect participants with new national and international audiences, artists, and professionals.
Artists must contemplate at least one instance of giving back to the community, understood as: workshop, talk, class, etc. This may be both in the territories where the residency takes place, as well as in their countries of origin, always within the year 2025. Support for the activity will be requested through a report, photographic and video record .

Those who wish to apply for the program must be 100% available in person to travel to Chiloé, Valparaíso in March, September, and November-December 2025.

What do you need

to apply?

Complete this online form, taking into account the details we share below:

Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pWCwC-jpAGcyKt9Dm9biPwC9VbIaXdsE2fT9ouoxQxk/edit

Introduction: Write a brief summary of yourself. We'd like to know about your artistic journey: What have you worked on? Do you have a working methodology? How do you develop your projects? (Maximum 1,200 characters)
Tell us about the project you want to develop in 2025. Give a summary of the project in 1,200 characters: What is it about? Who does it involve? What themes does it address? How will you carry it out?
Make a list of actions and strategies you plan to develop during the year to carry out your research. (Maximum 1,200 characters)
Considering that the residency program is rooted in the notion of living art connected to the territory in which it is produced, briefly explain: How do you imagine the residency periods in Valparaíso and Castro (Chiloé) could contribute to your process? How could you establish a creative relationship with the communities of the Valparaíso and Los Lagos regions? And finally, tell us how your artistic practice could benefit from this encounter with the territory and how the territory could nourish your practice. (Maximum 1,000 characters)

Write a motivation letter telling us why you want to be part of this program. (Maximum 1,000 characters.)
Put together a portfolio of your previous work that you consider relevant to the project you are applying for. It is suggested that the portfolio reflect the applicant's creative vision, aesthetics, the themes that interest them, and their approach to work. (The portfolio should be no more than 6 pages long and no larger than 100 MB in PDF format.)
Once you have submitted your application, upload a video to your personal or company social media, mentioning the title of your project and stating that you are participating in the Avanzada Sur call: A program of live arts in residence and mentoring for young artists from Latin America, tagging @cuerposur (maximum 60 seconds). Remember: upload the video to your social media tagging @cuerposur only once you have submitted the form.

Dates and

application deadlines:

Application documents open: December 4, 2024

Closing date for applications: January 18, 2025

Pre-selection of proposals: 18 proposals will be shortlisted. We will also conduct a personal interview with the shortlisted artists with the Cuerpo Sur Foundation team on January 25 and 29, 2025.

Ten candidates will be selected, and a final interview will be conducted with a mixed jury, both internal and external to the January 30th and 31st Foundation.

Final selection publication date: February 3

Due to the number of participants, we will not provide feedback on projects that have not been selected.