Studio 170 | Residency

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A Laboratory for Ideas

The Goethe-Institut Boston opens its unique, flexible space in Back Bay to artists and creative minds as a “laboratory” for ideas.

Beyond just another gallery or concert hall, Studio 170 provides artists and audiences with an open, lively place for inspiration, experimentation, and open discourse in the heart of Boston. With this new format, the Goethe-Institut Boston invites New England artists from all fields of artistic practice to use our newly-renovated space to experiment, innovate, and connect with our international community.

Studio 170 was established in 2019 to open the Goethe-Institut Boston’s unique, flexible space to New England artists from all fields of artistic practice as a “laboratory” for ideas. A jury made up of curators and cultural advocates from New England selects a new cohort of artists per year from received applications. Since its founding, eight artists and artist collaboratives have developed projects within 2-week residencies. The plan is to expand the program to promote transatlantic dialogue and exchange between artists through solo and joint residencies in New England and Germany.

Artists in Residence 2026

May 2026

Ena Kantardžić and Sylvie Mayer: I promise, mute body

The exhibition is a stage. The Grand Hall features seats for an audience, present and absent concurrently. The stage constructed for the exhibition is not only a literal one, but a conceptual one, that functions in the round, both through time and space.

Artists Ena Kantardžić and Sylvie Mayer develop a two-person experiential exhibition of works called I promise, mute body that includes generative choreography and performance led by Mary Ann Mayer.

(c) Kantardzic-Mayer (c) Kantardzic-Mayer
September 2026

Yide Cai: Steeped

Steeped(品) is a metatheatrical play about a teabag who died a thousand deaths, and literally a rehearsal for the revolution that reimagines the Boston Tea Party from the perspective of the tea itself at its 250th anniversary.

Playwright Yide Cai, theater director and dramaturg Skye Xiaotian Lu and designer Qingan Zhang develop a workshop production version of the play as an in-progress, site-responsive staging that works for flexible, nontraditional spaces: a performance that unfolds among the audience, collapsing rehearsal and performance.

(c) Cai (c) Cai