Boraviшte

Teren

Zvjezdane Staze is, as far as we know, the only artist residency in rural Bosnia and Herzegovina dedicated to contemporary composition, experimental music, and media art, and one of very few of its kind in Yugoslavia’s successor states.

Thirty years after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a country where public funding for contemporary art is scarce and largely concentrated in a handful of urban centres. Villages across the country are disappearing. Young people leave, houses empty, communities dissolve. Rural Bosnia is not underrepresented in cultural life; it is largely abandoned. Zvjezdane Staze exists in deliberate contradiction to this: a residency in the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a village where nobody would expect such a thing to be, doing exactly the work that is assumed to require metropolitan infrastructure.

Mijakovići

The neighbours are hosts, interlocutors, collaborators, and often the most inspiring audience. They have welcomed artists into their daily life with a directness and generosity that reshapes how those artists see their own practice, and sometimes far more than that. This is a residency that exists because of its location, in a village at the geographical and cultural heart of Bosnia.

More about the space →

Resonance

The curatorial focus lies in sound, composition, media art, and artistic research, but the programme is open to artists, writers, and researchers from any discipline. Artists come with concepts and questions often shaped by this specific context: the landscape, the history, the post-war condition, the traditions of a region that rarely appears on the map of contemporary art. Stays last typically one to four weeks, longer by arrangement. What the residency offers is a working context embedded in a specific place, a growing international network, and a set of conditions shaped by conviction rather than budget.

Connections made here have continued well beyond individual stays. Former residents have returned for collaborative projects, performed at partner festivals, and developed work that began in Mijakovići into long-term artistic partnerships. The annual programme (concerts, a solstice festival, literary weekends, a permanent sound walk, masterclasses) creates regular points of encounter between residents, invited artists, and the local community.

Načela

Zvjezdane Staze is self-financed and operates without public subsidy. Three paths lead in, and each of them runs through application and selection: Boraviшte, the main residency, where the artist contributes toward the cost of a stay; a funded position through an open call; and collaboration, where terms are shaped together. Every residency is held on a bursary from Fondacija Prostor. What the artist contributes co-finances a stay; it does not pay for one. Transparent finances and samodoprinos (a fixed share of all income returned to the village) are practiced as core infrastructure. More about our principles →

How to apply

Use the online application form or write to info@zvjezdanestaze.ba. Describe your work, what you would use the time for, and when you are thinking of coming. Include links, scores, or images. No fixed format required.

Funded positions are announced through open calls on the calendar and newsletter. Selected residencies run through the year. External mobility grants can cover part or all of a stay. If finances are a barrier, talk to us.