The philosophy of the Embrace Space Residency Program is of the relational, the creative and the restorative. And although the outreach is wide-intended, the operational is fundamentally small-scaled and participant-committed. In the field of visual arts, ecology, human rights, attention is focused on a more imaginative and experimental process of practice itself. The Embrace Residency Program invites the combining of inventiveness of vivid minds with the activities of studio-based practice, of walking, of research and reflection. Every resident can benefit of this peaceful period as an inflexion point in her or his life—a period providing them with a critical distance and invaluable space-time. The residents are not isolated but in a generative togetherness. Presentations, meetings and discussions will grant them also frequent contact with the community and its craftsmanship.

The beauty of the sites and the special nature of the local communities in the network of the Embrace Space residencies, as if ‘in’ and ‘out’ of this world, reminding us of the philosophical concept of Heterotopia. Following the template of established notions of utopia and dystopia, heterotopia flows from the prefix hetero- in Ancient Greek ἕτερος (héteros, ‘other, another, different’) and τόπος (‘place’), meaning ‘other place’. It was elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional, and discursive spaces that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet challenging what is outside. As such, the concept seems appropriate in various ways to describe what Embrace Space is trying to achieve in however small a way.