Artist Ali Cherri inaugurates the 2014 season of the Videobrasil Artist Residency Program. Based in Beirut, Lebanon, Cherri won the Resartis Residency Prize at the 18th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil for his video installation Pipe Dreams. This month he started to develop his creative process at the A-I-R Laboratory (Artists In Residency Laboratory), in Warsaw, Poland, where he will also be featured in an exhibition. Solange Farkas, Curator and Director of Videobrasil, along with Thereza Farkas, its Program Director, are scheduled to attend. According to Solange, "the new characteristic of the residencies this year is that they will include public performances and activities (…) an opportunity to establish closer contact with the participating artists and organizations." Solange is currently organizing at the Kiolab Contemporary Art Center, in Warsaw, an exhibition to mark Videobrasil's 30th anniversary. Other artists that have won two-month residencies from organizations associated with Videobrasil's network of residencies across the world include: Ayrson Heráclito, Gabriel Mascaró and Virgínia de Medeiros (Brazil), Bakary Diallo (Mali), Basir Mahmood (Pakistan), Laura Huertas-Millán (Colombia), LucFosther Diop (Cameroon) and Nurit Sharett (Israel). They will participate in exchange and traveling experiences in 12 centers from five different countries (Brazil, US, China , Polonia, Mexico and Senegal). According to Farkas, what makes the Residency Prize of the Festival stand out is the participation and commitment of its associated organization within the network, "both as part of the event itself—as participants in the debates and meetings—and in the public programs during the selection process of the artists." Following the announcement of the winners by the international jury, the associates of the network of residencies collectively meet and decide, based on the profiles of each of the artists, who is more compatible with a specific residency program. Starting this year, Videobrasil plans to improve its monitoring of the residencies and to strengthen its relationship with the various regions. During their trip to Poland, Solange and Thereza Farkas will develop a series of strategies designed to strengthen the relationship with the artists in residence and the network associates, also with the goal of establishing greater contact with other local artists and organizations. "We want to improve the monitoring of the residency experience and to gain more access in certain regions. Presenting a video exhibition and a public program of activities in Poland during Ali Cherri's residency is for us a way of staying closer to him (…) and of widening the scope of our research of contemporary Eastern European art," affirms Videobrasil's Programming Director, Thereza Farkas, who this year is planning other similar programs for other residencies in New York, Beijing, Dakar and in the Itaparica Island (in Bahia). More information is available online at Videobrasil's homepage: http://site.videobrasil.org.br/news/1778892