TAIFUN is devoted to exchange between cultures and breaking through the barriers between art forms. With exploratory interventions and active collaboration, TAIFUN promotes cultural productivity.

Residenz Niederrhein is a regional residency research project that TAIFUN launched in 2018. The project crosses the border between Germany and the Netherlands. Through the multiple interventions of contemporary art and culture, residents will work closely and actively collaborate with local resources in these areas. Engaging with the themes of the global and the local, homogeneity and difference, boundaries and identity, fractures and fusions, loss and return, the project features flexible sites of cultural production in which to realize a local practice.

The project features multiple, multi-disciplinary art professionals who will live in residences scattered across the region. The 2018 artists in residence come from contemporary art, theater, and literature. The project has three residency locations and eight key areas of activity, offering ten-week residencies. While the artists are in residence, they will investigate local texts, histories, circumstances, and cultural landscapes, and engage more deeply with everyday life. After periods of regional research and local collaboration, the residents will present their new work.

The localities hope to use “the mirror of the Other” to rediscover and translate the genetic code of regional culture. As a result of the cultural production and human interactions that are activated, the project will construct regional cultural contours in a new context. In addition, the local practice of contemporary art and culture will spark thought and motivation in contemporary intellectuals, providing the first on-site field of experimentation for cultural production.