YEKI
Call for application
arts/sciences residency on a sailboat
From October 1 to 23, 2025
Application deadline: May 15
Selection announced end of May
from Eleusis
to the greek islands…
Description
8 artist-researchers in a context conducive to encounters. The journey will start in Eleusis (European Capital of Culture 2023, on the outskirts of Athens), before you embark on a 2-week sailboat trip to the Greek islands. The residency will end with 5 days in Athens.
You will be accompanied by Timothée Chalazonitis (artist) and Edouard Bourély (captain and designer).
How to apply?
Eligibility
The residency is aimed at French-speaking ARTISTS and SCIENTISTS who have completed their training and are working professionally on themes related to ecology, habitat, crafts, the living and movement.
Profiles with experience of the sea or community life, or who speak Greek, are welcome.
Application
Your CV
A portfolio (for artists)
A PDF file (2 pages max) including :
a summary of your artistic or research approach
a note of intent for the residency
Conditions
During the residency, you'll be asked to present a topic of your choice to the crew, in connection with your work (artist, exhibition, research in progress, problematic, etc.).
You'll take turns keeping a protean logbook, preparing meals and washing up.
We're looking for a showcase format to share the memories gleaned and reflections begun on board.
A presentation of work inspired by the residency will be held in spring 2026 in Marseille (European Capital of Culture 2013).
Additional information will be sent to selected candidates to help them prepare for the residency.
Cost: €1,200/personne
The budget includes boat hire, accommodation and food for the 3 weeks. It does not include transportation to Athens. We are looking for partners to reduce the cost of your participation.
If you have any questions, more details below. And don't hesitate to contact us.
yeki.residence@gmail.com
We are dreamers…
We are dreamers. We love stories. The ones we imagine, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones that inspire us... We need stories to get us moving: rich and inspiring, credible and nuanced, apt to initiate collective adventures.
To inspire one story, and initiate many others, we propose a collective adventure.
Come aboard a sailboat for an extraordinary voyage, an opportunity to step back in time in a mobile and limitless setting, a parenthesis of encounters between knowledge, practices and realities. Through Greek landscapes and overlapping eras, you'll discover, from island to island, via the sea, stories that will resonate with your own. This odyssey will be the opportunity to start a composite logbook together. Once back on land, it will be enriched by everyone's interpretations, so as to embark even more widely.
Yeki bood, yeki nabood…
Manifesto
For several years now, we've been sailing together across the oceans and the lands that border them, meeting the people who live there and discovering their stories. They, and we, are privileged witnesses to the changes in our lifestyles, the evolution of Nature and the possibilities offered by new perspectives. And we wanted to go further. By sharing these experiences widely. By taking you into a space-time conducive to encounters, fertile questioning and the creation of links.
That's why we're launching this arts and sciences residency on a sailboat.
A sailboat is an exceptional medium for encountering the Other. This Other, unknown, exotic, whom we'll meet at the next port of call, but also this Other with whom we travel and are embarked for a time. That Other who questions us, makes us reconsider our certainties, opens our minds to new possibilities. Setting off on a sailboat means taking a step back.
A boat is also a spaceship. Accommodation for a few individuals, it's a concrete, concentrated metaphor for our planet: a boat launched into the middle of the immensity that harbors life in a subtle balance. Isolated, we become aware of our fragility and the value of our onboard resources: food, water, but also the stories and people who accompany us. Promiscuity forces us to live together, to decide on direction, to cooperate in order to move forward. Sailing is a collective initiative, a political process.
Driven by the wind and its vagaries, the weather gives us the tempo, a rare opportunity to take our time at a time when, like Carrollian rabbits, we are constantly chasing after it. Without certainty but with intention, we make progress by tacking, a way of groping our way through the reality that surrounds us.
At last, a sailboat is a bridge. A bridge between our familiar point of departure and the unknown that awaits us at every port of call. A meeting point between a multitude of worlds.
We'd like to share this eloquent experience with people who observe, listen and question the world in the making, to nourish their work and initiate cooperative ventures. We're talking to artists, thinkers, researchers, the curious, the doers and the sensitive.
How does life at sea and the experience of the open sea challenge our lives as earthlings?
What do we bring back on land?
PROGRAM 2025
In 2025 we are launching the 1st edition of the residency in Greece, because that's where our stories began:
Eleusis and the Greek islands
From October 1 to 23
3 weeks
8 participants
A collective deliverable
2 exhibitions
1200€
We'll start by exploring Eleusis
La pierre triste, film by Filippos Koutsaftis, 2000
Eleusis, a town on the outskirts of Athens with a distinctive geography, is a melting pot of myth, history and industry over the centuries. If for some its name means Arrival, we propose to make it the starting point of a residence.
In 2023, Eleusis was the European Capital of Culture. To mark the occasion, the city presented an artistic, research and educational program entitled “The Mysteries of Transition”. For 10 months, this large industrial suburb of Athens hosted hundreds of artists and over 400 events.
Eleusis was an important city in Antiquity and during the Roman Empire. Slaves and emperors alike came from all over Greece to be initiated into its Mysteries. Aristotle described this ritual experience in honor of Demeter, which influenced even modern thought and was evoked by
Marguerite Yourcenar and Albert Camus alike.
In the 19th century, the city became a haven for migrants fleeing Asia Minor and the Greco-Turkish war - today it is home to Ukrainians. At the same time, its proximity to the capital and its privileged geography enabled it to become one of the country's major industrial hubs. And while the cement industry may have disappeared after swallowing the hills, the town is still home to one of the country's largest refineries, the main steelworks and a shipyard that is still in operation. But de-industrialization has taken its toll and, combined with pollution, has turned the bay into a boat graveyard...
What remains today of this past and these events? To kick off this residency on the theme of Encounters, we invite you to discover those between ages and uses, cultures and territories.
Then we'll set sail to discover the open sea, the Greek islands and coasts...
The 1st week, on a sailboat
This will be a time for meeting new people and discovering new things. The first few days will be an opportunity for everyone to familiarize themselves with the marine environment, and to present their work and thoughts to the rest of the crew. The boat's setting, mobile on an infinite horizon, will be an opportunity to discover a special relationship with others and with the resources on board. The boat will become both a stage for encounters between its occupants and a medium for setting off to meet different elsewhere.
The 2nd week, on a sailboat
Once you've found your rhythm on board, it's time to let the opportunities arise. Each day will be an opportunity for discovery, reflection and exchange: a moment dedicated to sharing impressions will take place every day before lunch.
Suggested route : Eleusis, Milos, Naxos, Tinos, Kythnos, Athènes
The program of stopovers is not set in stone and will depend on the weather and the wishes of the crew. Depending on the forecast, the captain will propose a route through some of the countless Greek islands. This route will evolve according to the wishes of the crew: from a change of bay for anchorage to the unexpected exploration of a singular archipelago.
Don't hesitate to share your wishes in advance: the boat offers the freedom to change programs and stop almost anywhere.
Aegina, rival of Athens and one of the first maritime and trading cities of ancient Greece, home to the temple of Aphaïa and important pistachio production.
Hydra, whose shipowners played a decisive role in the Greek War of Independence, is home to annexes of the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art.
Milos, famous for its Venus, has been exploiting its many mineral resources since the 2nd millennium BC, giving it its white or brightly colored cliffs.
Serifos, the barren island where Danae and her son Perseus took refuge and defeated the Gorgon Medusa. One of its bays is home to an abandoned mine.
Folegandros, a land of exile during the dictatorship, with villages clinging to the edge of the vertiginous cliff.
Paros, famous for its transparent marble, its Panaghia Ekatontapiliani basilica, its agricultural plains and for being the home of independence war heroine Manto Mavrogenous.
Naxos, the largest and highest island in the Aegean, under the divine tutelage of Dyonisos, is prosperous thanks to its geography and abundant resources.
Astipalaia, the butterfly of Greece, is home to countless coves and famous relics such as a 7th-century BC necropolis and a Venetian castle.
The 3rd week, on land
At the end of the cruise, 5 days will be devoted to :
selecting memories and highlights of the trip,
formatting them into a multi-faceted logbook,
a presentation in Athens. This stage will serve as documentation of the residency.
Who?
We welcome 8 participants (5-6 artists and 2-3 scientists). The selection is open to all research disciplines and all nationalities, and we welcome researchers: artists, biologists, dancers, thinkers, sociologists and all those who broaden our knowledge and the spectrum of our emotions.
How?
During the residency, participants will share a single-sex cabin with one other person; bathrooms will be shared by the whole crew.
The boat will serve as a shared workspace. You will be able to disembark on land every day, unless the program - announced in advance and decided together - prevents this. You'll need to consider the constraints of your environment:
limited space,
constant movement,
electricity and internet almost non-existent,
and resources limited to what you take on board.
“They will always be needed to show people what unites them over and above what divides them, and to renew belief in a higher humanity in the hearts of men and women. ”
Stefan Zweig
Delivrables
We see residencies as a source of inspiration and reflection for those who take part in them, especially on a boat, a vector for memorable experiences that continue and spread once back on land.
Our ambition is to report on the various stages of creation...
The extra-ordinary events and fruitful encounters that launch our thinking
The reflections initiated on board
And the work that will result several months later
... in order to disseminate these ideas widely.
A logbook will be kept daily to immortalize key events, and will be kept by each crew member in turn. At the end of the navigation, a short landing phase will enable the crew to select the most significant elements (notes, photographs, memories gleaned, etc.).
The 1st sharing, at the end of the residency, is intended to present the logbook with its raw memories (notes, photographs, reflections, 1st spontaneous reactions).
6 months later, we'd like to organize alternative off-site presentations in Paris and/or Marseille (European Capital of Culture 2013). The objectives are twofold:
to present how this singular experience has infused the practices of each participant,
to share with a variety of audiences the subjects addressed during the residency.