Kuttler, N: Reisestipendien 2021 (Neue Kunst in Hamburg e. V

This publication is being issued on the occasion of the 15th edition of Neue Kunst in Hamburg e.V.'s travel grant: the association, founded in 1986, has been biennially awarding this funding program since 1996 to support and promote up-and-coming artists who studied in Hamburg and/or live there, in collaboration with varying invited guest curators. It covers travel expenses and subsistence allowances for a stay abroad of several months, a joint exhibition and nally a publication to present the artistic inquiries produced during the grant period to the widest audience possible. The call for entries of this edition in the fall of 2019 met once again with a gratifyingly positive response. Though, given the high level of the approximately 100 applications, it was not easy to make a nal selection, the outstanding works of art (and the destinations developed in dialogue for this purpose) by Karimah Ashadu, CONNY, Nina Kuttler, Fion Pellacini and Nina Zeljkovic¿ convinced in the end.
In mid-February 2020, the travel destinations and research inquiries were presented jointly with the grant recipients to the members of the association in Hamburg. At the latest with the beginning of the lockdown that followed shortly thereafter, however, it became clear that travel would be difficult for this edition of the grant. Instead of journeys to distant places, new encounters, experiences, exchange and mobility, the grant recipients, too, like all of us for the most part stayed home during the subsequent months, while the COVID-19 pandemic spread dramatically. Travel plans to Brazil, Trinidad, Nigeria, to the deserts of California, Croatia and Turkey - to name a few, were abbreviated, postponed repeatedly, or, if they had already taken place by the time of this volume's release, were without exception shaped by the conditions of the global pandemic.

Similarly, the series of publications accompanying the project reflects this situation inasmuch as, beyond a series of travel reports and introductions to the artists' works, the individual volumes reflect the specific concomitant travel circumstances during a global pandemic, ways to artistically and mentally cope with a lockdown and about access and exclusion, about changing planes and about staying home waiting. What emerged is a series of five travel notebooks which, besides journeys across the continents, include mental journeys through a drastically changing present.