LT
The Resistance Song Residency, organized by Sodas 2123, is a three-month artistic and research-based residency in Vilnius, Lithuania, dedicated to exploring the intersection of resistance, solidarity, and healing through music and sound-making. Open to sound artists, visual and performance artists, humanities researchers and activists, the program invites six selected participants to investigate and interpret the role of song and sound in collective resilience and cultural expression. Through artistic experimentation, interdisciplinary research, and collaboration, the residency critically examines the role of sound and performance as catalysts for resistance, solidarity, and collective action.
The residency is curated by Vaida Stepanovaitė (curator and writer), Jura Elena Šedytė (composer, performer), and Vaidas Bartušas (countertenor, facilitator and producer) in collaboration with the SODAS 2123 team.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the program explores how singing functions as an act of resistance and community-building, particularly in an era defined by individualism. Hosted by SODAS 2123, the residency provides an infrastructure for in-depth research and creative experimentation, encouraging participants to investigate questions such as:
- What does collective singing signify in today’s society?
- How can sound and song function as healing practices?
- In what ways can performative rituals serve as acts of resistance?
During the residency, participants are encouraged to make at least one open presentation of their work on the theme of collective singing as an act of resistance. Depending on the approach of the artists themselves, this may include:
Collective Singing: A Tool for Resistance and Belonging
This thematic strand focuses on the political, emotional, and cultural power of singing together. Participants are invited to investigate how collective vocal expression has historically been used to build solidarity, protest injustice, and foster communal resilience. In an age marked by hyper-individualism and digital fragmentation, the act of singing together becomes a radical gesture — one that challenges isolation and affirms presence.
Artists and researchers may work with choirs, community singing groups, or site-specific gatherings, and draw from oral traditions, protest songs, or invented compositions. Through these explorations, the residency supports an examination of how collective voice can become a vehicle for both resistance and belonging.
Sound as Healing Practice: Listening, Transformation, Recovery
This thread invites participants to explore the therapeutic, embodied, and spiritual dimensions of sound and music. How can sonic practices be used to restore, realign, or reclaim? What happens when listening itself becomes a form of resistance — a refusal to be numbed or silenced?
From experimental sound art to ancient vocal techniques, from field recordings to meditative practices, residents can engage with sound as a tool for care, repair, and emotional release, especially in the context of trauma, marginalization, or ecological crisis. Collaboration with local healers, musicians, or communities is encouraged.
Performative Rituals: Reclaiming the Sacred, Reimagining the Political
This focus area explores ritual as a performative and symbolic act that binds communities and challenges dominant narratives. Residents are encouraged to create or reinterpret rituals that engage with resistance movements, ecological concerns, gendered or spiritual traditions, or postcolonial memory.
Whether through durational performances, participatory acts, or symbolic gestures, performative rituals in this context act as sites of transformation — where personal and collective histories are re-enacted, contested, and re-imagined. These explorations may intersect with performance art, movement practices, ceremonial acts, or experimental theatre.
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The residency program would take a space at SODAS 2123 cultural complex. It is a self-governing community-based space, operated and curated by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. It brings together creators and researchers from different fields, with practices based on experimentation and developing unexpected formats.
With over 50 artists’ studios, rehearsal studios for bands, offices for design, film and visual arts organizations, exhibition spaces, event spaces, various workshops, a café, a public outdoor garden space, a public allotment and more, SODAS 2123 provides space for a variety of art and cultural disciplines and each resident of the complex is open to sharing, learning and craftsmanship.
Residency duration is 3 calendar months. Available residency periods:
- From 1 st of March to 31 st of May 2026
- From 1 st of June to 31 st of August 2026
- From 1 st of September to 30 th of November 2026
The residency grant is 2400 EUR per artist (tax inclusive). The residency also covers travel expenses to and from the residency up to 250 EUR. In addition, there is a sum of 300 Euros to cover the production material expenses allocated for each artist.
Only artists from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia (as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland) are eligible to apply.
Residency is located in a repurposed school building about 15 minutes walk from Vilnius Old Town, in a calm and friendly neighbourhood called Rasų Kolonija. The residency provides individual rooms (28 m² individual room with kitchenette and bathroom, 27 m² and 19 m² individual rooms with shared kitchen and bathroom) and the opportunity to work in a shared studio.
Please send the filled application form to residency@sodas2123.lt by January 10, 2026. If you have any questions, please contact the residency curator Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė residency@sodas2123.lt
This residency program is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture and is organised by SODAS 2123.
Activities of Sodas2123 are funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius Municipality.