ELSEHERE Community

New Inside Out Artist Conversation with Li Ning

Why does a person dance?

Li Ning’s answer is not about dreams, passion, or career planning.It is something harsher, and more real:

Sometimes, if you do not dance, you cannot go on living.

In this episode, we speak with Li Ning at length about the body, dance, fatherhood, injury, growing up, desire, death, and art.From a rural childhood in northern China, to the breakdance wave of the 1980s, to contemporary dance and live art, what he offers is not a story of success, but the story of how a person can be interrupted by life again and again, and how the body can keep bringing him back to himself.

Residencies, Workshops, & Fellowships

Center for Craft – 2026 Craft Archive FellowshipFour $5,000 awards will be offered to fellows conducting research on underrepresented craft histories. The fellowship will culminate with a featured article on Hyperallergic and a virtual program hosted by the Center for Craft. Read more on Hyperallergic.Deadline: May 20, 2026 | centerforcraft.org

Oak Spring Garden Foundation - Fellowship for Distinction in Fine Crafts and DesignThe fellowship will be awarded to an early-career craftsperson or designer whose work meaningfully engages with the natural world. It includes a $10,000 grant and a two- to five-week stay at OSGF in Northern Virginia.Deadline: May 31, 2026 | osgf.org

Provincetown Art Association and Museum - Robert Motherwell & Renate Ponsold FellowshipA one-year, low-residency program that supports scholars conducting original research on the visual art and artists of Outer Cape Cod. Deadline: June 1, 2026 | paam.org

Open Calls for Art & Writing

Some words describe feelings so precisely that entire paragraphs fail to compete.

Fernweh is one of them — a German word for the ache of distant places, the longing for somewhere you’ve never been. It is not ordinary wanderlust. It is deeper, quieter, almost spiritual: the feeling that your soul recognizes roads your body has never walked.

It lives in airport terminals, train stations, maps, foreign skylines, and late nights spent imagining another life somewhere else. It is the strange homesickness for the unknown.

Maybe Fernweh is not about escaping where you are.

Maybe it is the heart reminding you that you were made to keep expanding.

Where does your Fernweh point? 🌍

Hi Friends,

We wanted to share a few new pieces published on STRATUM this week. Each one moves in a different direction, but all of them bring real depth, care, and urgency in the way they think through art, history, politics, and lived experience. We hope you’ll spend some time with them.

Communitas: An Art Manifesto

https://www.elsehereglobal.com/post/communitas-an-art-manifesto

Fish Slapping, Dancing, Feminist Disability

https://www.elsehereglobal.com/post/fish-slapping-dancing-feminist-disability