Summer Sessions are short-term residencies for young and emerging artists, organized by an international network of cultural organizations. Each summer the partners in this network for talent development collaborate to offer professional production support and expert feedback to artists in the realization of a new artwork or design. Local talents from each partner’s geographic region are scouted and selected for a residency abroad, where they are offered highly productive atmospheres and specific kinds of expertise at one of the international partners in the international network. This collaboration not only results in the development of a large number of new projects in a relatively short period, but also provides the participating emerging artists with international experience that helps them jumpstart their art and design practice.

The Summer Sessions pop-up exhibition at the Festival Ars Electronica  shows a selection of outcomes realized through this international exchange of emerging talents. While the pop-up exhibition illustrates the kind of results that this pressure-cooker residency format results in, a live event will highlight the participants’ experiences abroad and the effects these had on their early careers. In doing so, V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, the initiating partner of the Summer Sessions network, intends to inform ambitious early-career artist about the opportunities that the international network for talent development offers and is reaching out to other cultural organizations with an invitation to join the network. Furthermore, the pop-up exhibition introduces the Ars Electronica Festival audience to a selection of promising emerging Dutch artists who participated in the network. The event will close with an informal drink to continue the conversation on the opportunities for young artists and cultural organizations within the Summer Sessions network for talent development.

This event will also form a meeting point to discuss how to strategically further develop these international opportunities for emerging and young professionals with the network’s past and present partners. The partners in the 2016 edition of the Summer Sessions include Chronus Art Center (China), the National University of Tres de Febrero (Argentina), the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), PNEK (Norway), iMAL (Belgium), Arquivo 237 (Portugal), Kitchen Budapest (Hungary), Metamedia Association (Croatia), Interactive Media Design Lab, NAIST (Japan) and V2_ Institut for the Unstable Media (The Netherlands). This program is made possible by the generous support of the Creative Industries Fund (NL).