The JUNGE AKADEMIE, VISIT, the artist-in-residence programme of the E.ON Stiftung and E-WERK Luckenwalde are cooperating to offer four fully funded fellowships once again in 2025 for international artists, to fund projects operating at the intersection of art, science and ecology, concerning the topic of the human machine.

Artists from all disciplines can apply online for the 2025 funding round.

Application Deadline: 31 July 2024

The consortium of partners is calling all emerging artists to apply for a fellowship programme focused on the topic Mensch-Machine (Human Machine). The call particularly encourages applications from diasporic artists, affected by the poly-crisis, who need a safe and nurturing opportunity to propel their career.

The jury for the fellowships includes:

Anna Gritz, Director, Haus am Waldsee
Anh-Linh Ngo, Vice-President of Akademie der Künste, Architecture Theorist and Curator
Tiara Roxanne, Artist
Sinthujan Varatarajah, Political Geographer
Laura Helena Wurth, Art critic and Curator

Grant

Successful fellows will be endowed with EUR 20,000. This grant is intended to be put towards production costs of a new project, which may include research and development, travel and material costs.

Studio

Selected artists will have a studio space at E-WERK Luckenwalde or at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin from 1 April until 30 June 2025. During these three months, the fellows are expected to be living and working in the studios for at least 75 % of the time.

Event Programme

Furthermore, joint events will be planned at the Akademie der Künste and E-WERK, culminating in a joint exhibition at E-WERK Luckenwalde in Autumn 2025 for all fellows between 2023 and 2025.

Open Call

The complex relationship between humanity and machines has been the subject of art and artistic practice since the beginning of the Industrial Age, echoing the beginning of the modern anthropocene, which takes on new meaning in the face of the climate catastrophe and the emergence and development of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. Fundamental and ingrained systemic, philosophical, economic, ecological and ethical concepts, as well as images of the world we live in, are being questioned. Following the Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford, AI here is not considered as artificial or intelligent, yet both embodied and material, made from natural resources, fuel, human labour, infrastructures, logistics, histories, and classifications. As Crawford also describes, it is one of the biggest myths in the field of AI, that intelligence exists independently of social, cultural, historical or political forces, whereas the concept of a superior intelligence has caused immense damage since centuries.

By discussing concepts, playing out scenarios and speculating on futures, the arts can generate a specific aesthetic knowledge in this area. Dystopian fictions around omniscient and sentient machines that turn against humans, develop desires and seek freedom in addition to fantasies of human immortality dominate the Western cultural imagination.

The Human Machine programme therefore funds international (emerging) artists, who work with, or address ideas surrounding digital technologies, the anthropocene, and/or Artificial Intelligence in the broadest sense.

Practitioners are invited to apply; who seek to question the political imaginary, challenge the Western story of progress and problematic dualisms of natural and artificial and offer new ideas of patterns, narrations and approaches to a world with machines and who explore urgent aspects of today’s societies and the planet and transform their research into aesthetically compelling forms.

Since 2022, the partnership between VISIT, JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste and E-WERK Luckenwalde specifically aims to deepen questions on sustainability in the field of digital technologies. How can we acknowledge or integrate our petro cultural histories into a landscaping of a renewable future? Where can humanity and machinery meet to ignite systemic change? How can we nurture more than human rights?

Timeline

31 May 2024: Open Call Opens
31 July 2024: Call Closes
October 2024: Jury Meeting
End of October 2024: Applicants informed

Programme

April – June 2025: Residency time at E-WERK or Akademie der Künste
Spring 2025: Open Studios at E-WERK & Akademie der Künste
Autumn 2025: Final Exhibition of all Fellows from the years 2024–2025 at E-WERK Luckenwalde & symposia at Akademie der Künste

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