Roodkapje is Rotterdam's local laboratory for
ART X LIVE X FOOD and everything in between
OPEN CALL
OPEN CALL for the Hamburger Community 2025
What’s Happening?!!
an Interdisciplinary and Collective Laboratory for Happenings.
5 January 2025 23:59: application deadline
11 December 2024: information evening from 19:30-21:00
9-15 February 2025: interview week
May 2025 – March 2026: dates residency
Roodkapje invites interdisciplinary artists (visual artists, musicians, performers, designers and the like) to our 10 month long laboratory for collaborative practice, collective fun and direct interaction between artists and audience. Are you looking to dive into an experiment involving four collaborators, several mentors and a place full of dynamic possibilities?
This experimental artist-residency laboratory runs from May ’25 – March ’26 and has its headquarters at Roodkapje in the city center of Rotterdam.
Hamburger Community 2025-2026
For Hamburger Community 2025-2026, Roodkapje invites interdisciplinary artists (visual artists, musicians, performers, theatermakers, designers) to our laboratory for collaborative practice, collective fun and direct interaction between artists and audience. Are you looking to dive into an experiment involving four collaborators, several mentors and a place full of dynamic possibilities?
The Hamburger Community are five artists in residence that collaborate for 10 months to develop a series of Happenings together. They do so collectively, guided by mentors and by inviting in other collaborators in- or outside the Randstad. At Roodkapje we believe collaboration is a muscle that needs to be trained. The residency depends on collectivity for all artistic, organizational and public matters. Production budgets, conceptual development, program planning and mentor trajectories are managed and decided on together. Aside from collaborating with each other, the Hamburger Community also collaborates with Roodkapje’s team, who offer concept, production, financial and communication support. Residents of the Hamburger Community get access to Roodkapje’s collective working space and communal living room, a monthly stipend, production budget(s) and free access to all of Roodkapje’s program.
Read the full information folder on Hamburger Community here.
The Hamburger Community Test Site is:
- A collaborative residency with 5 interdisciplinary artists
- Collectively developing a public program in the shape of Happenings
- A wild learning experience
The Hamburger Community Members get:
- A shared studio- and workspace
- A monthly stipend of € 750,-
- Program and production budget(s)
- Access to use all Roodkapje’s facilities for presentation
- Try-outs with professionals from the cultural field
- A weekly meeting with lunch included
- Conceptual and practical guidance and support from Roodkapje’s curator and team
- Free access to Roodkapjes’ cultural program
The Hamburger Community Test site runs from May 2025 – March 2026 (August is holiday)
What’s Happening?!!
Roodkapje is interested in the intersections of art, activism, and wonder. Here, we see the Happening as an art form full of playful, disruptive and subversive potential. The Happenings are core to the public program developed by the Hamburger Community, and Roodkapje’s anarchive also evolves from them. In light of today’s dire social and political circumstances, we ask: how would contemporary artists reimagine, reshape, and organize a Happening?
Need more info?
For further questions you can send an email to our curator Wan Ing Que through ying@roodkapje.org
We also organize an information session on the 11th of December 19:30-21.00 at Roodkapje, Delftseplein 39. This information session is open for anyone that is thinking of applying.
During this evening you can meet Roodkapje’s staff responsible for the Hamburger Community, ask all your questions and get a tour through our location. Find more information about this evening on our website.
Happenings
The Happenings are core to the public program developed by the Hamburger Community, and Roodkapje’s anarchive also evolves from them. Roodkapje is interested in the intersections of art, activism, and wonder. Here, we see the Happening as an art form full of playful, disruptive and subversive potential, that calls for a radical imagination. Modeled on the unpredictable moments initiated by Allan Kaprow in the 1950s, they reappeared in different forms ever since. They produce clashes, confront and require adaptability, negotiation and empathy. We also take example and draw inspiration from Happenings organized by the Provos in the 1960s: their pragmatic approach to art and public space offered creative solutions to problems the state refused to tackle (or created..) such as the housing crisis or climate issues. We believe Happenings can help address contemporary developments in society and shake up people’s consciousness and perception. In light of today’s dire social and political circumstances, we ask: how would contemporary artists reimagine, reshape, and organize a Happening?
Anarchief/Anarchive:
Although the impact of a Happening continues to simmer with the audience, the time-based form actually determines that it is fleeting. This presented Roodkapje with the challenge of archiving these moments for the audience visiting our location at other times. Roodkapje aims for the preservation of the moments and relations created in the Happenings to go beyond traditional documentation and beliefs. That’s why we began experimenting with anarchival practices in 2024. Young makers outside of the Hamburger Community transform the spirit of the Happenings into anarchival pieces, works to hold, discuss and do.
What’s new in 2025?
In 2025, Roodkapje will move house. The city has big renovation and reorganization plans for het Delftse Blok. We had an amazing seven years in our raw, spacious, leaky, sometimes smelly, always noisy anti-squat building and are sad to leave. At the time of writing this application, it is not yet confirmed where we will go. We are working hard to envision Roodkapje in a new habitat and are brainstorming about how to arrange the space so that it can host all the different elements of our organization: food, music and art.
What is certain is that the Hamburger Community and the art program will move to the new location with priority. We are planning to create a collective working space and communal living room, called the Working Memory. This space would be where the collective magic happens. It is shared not just amongst the Hamburger Community, but also amongst others involved in Roodkapje, like the Significant Others and the volunteers. Hamburger Community would have private use of the Working Memory at least one full day per week and also private storage will be made available for them.
Although we are very much looking forward, we also know 2025 will be a turbulent and chaotic time for Roodkapje. We ask for the new resident’s understanding for any inconvenience due to this situation.