Artist Residencies as Portals: Pulling Your Practice Out of Survival Mode
If you’ve been feeling creatively restless, quietly scared, or under-supported, it is so easy to believe that the next level of your life as an artist might never arrive.
So many of us are carrying the exact same private fears: Maybe my work is too weird. Too interdisciplinary. Too spiritual. Too inconsistent. Too underfunded. We spend years trying to squeeze our art into the exhausted leftovers of our lives—after work, between obligations, while navigating burnout, money stress, and the sheer heaviness of being alive right now.
But what if your art didn't have to live in the margins?
Over the last few months, my practice was deeply changed as I moved through Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, and New York. This journey wasn’t just a travel diary; it was a map. I engaged with heavy, sacred archives at the Humboldt Forum in Germany, participated in water rituals on the foggy riverbanks of Poland, taught cartography at an arts university in Austria, and was flown out to New York during Frieze Week.
These experiences acted as portals. They didn’t just change my resume—they recalibrated my nervous system and my entire self-concept.
In the newest episode of Your Art Is a Spell, I want to talk about why artist residencies matter, especially for the artists who don't neatly fit the mold.
In this episode, we’re diving into:
How residencies act as containers that pull you out of survival mode and make your art the main character again.
The hidden gifts of displacement, uncertainty, and entanglement.
My own vulnerable, heavy experiences working with sacred artifacts and "reanimacy" in German archives.
Why you do not need to be a "conventional" or perfectly polished artist to be chosen for these spaces.
Just as I recently explored Tactical Magic as a technology of the spirit for survival , an artist residency is a structural tool that interrupts your own disbelief. It moves you from "I hope I get to do this someday" to "I am already becoming the kind of artist who does this."
Your Next Steps: Watch & Join the Community
You do not need total certainty to begin. You may just need one brave application to open the next door.
1. Watch or listen to the New Episode
Listen to the full story and get the encouragement you need to mark that first residency deadline on your calendar.
Watch the full episode on YouTube above or listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-art-is-a-spell/id1796481637
2. Join Mutant Magic
If you are a weirdo, a multi-passionate, or a dreamer trying to build a real creative life without a lot of clear support, I created a new home for you. Mutant Magic is my new Ghost-based newsletter and membership space. It’s where I provide deeper, behind-the-scenes support around residency applications, artist statements, and building a sustainable life that can actually hold your complex work.
Sign up here or by clicking the link below:
👉 Sign up for the free Mutant Dispatches tier today: mutant-magic.com
Your practice deserves more than the scraps capitalism leaves behind. Your art is a spell, and it will change your life and the world around us.