Residency Program “AI Anarchies”: Open Call for Artists

The JUNGE AKADEMIE of Akademie der Künste, Berlin, will support six artists in developing new works on the topic “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ethics” during a six-month residency program at ZK/U in Berlin titled “AI Anarchies.” Artists of the program will be invited to participate in an interdisciplinary and international autumn school in October 2022 with artists, scientists, and members of the Akademie. The invited artists’ projects will be shown in a final presentation between May and July 2023 at Akademie der Künste. Each fellowship is awarded with 20,000 euros. The program is funded by the Federal Commisioner for Culture and the Media.

Discourse: AI Anarchies

Artists have discussed and predicted the ethical problems of “intelligent” machines since long before Artificial Intelligence even existed. In the midst of today’s technology boom, questions on what is “good” or “bad” AI are ever more present and increasingly complex.

Companies and governments worldwide have now established rules and self-commitments for trustworthy, de-biased, or responsible AI, to build fairness and transparency into their systems. While it is necessary to address the potential harm of accelerated AI expansion, it is also true that these normative principles of AI ethics reduce space for civic action, resistance, and critique. “Counter AI” experiments in science and the arts are therefore opportunities to disrupt notions of ownership, agency, and regulation from outside conventional power centers.

“AI Anarchies” is a call for proposals open to artists in any field who work with AI as a topic and/or AI technologies in the broadest sense. The project seeks artists that contribute to the debate on AI and ethics through conceptual and aesthetically compelling forms. “AI Anarchies” invites artistic, speculative, and/or technical practices and interventions that articulate and challenge approaches to power and ethics in the emergence of AI. It proposes artistic resistance through subjective and political actions and creative acts. Small AI, disobedient AI, unimaginable AI, counter AI, tricky AI, risky AI, fantasy AI, playful AI, mischievous AI, emotional AI, affective AI, or no AI at all could all be roads to “AI Anarchies”.

Guidelines of the Call

Emerging international artists of all disciplines may apply for a six-month residency with a project proposal (400 words) including sketches. An international jury of external curators and Akademie members will select the fellows. Each residency is awarded with a 20,000-euro stipend including a project budget for developing a piece for the exhibition. Furthermore, a rent-free studio space for living and working in Berlin with access to communal spaces for six months will be provided by project partner ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik. If they wish, fellows can share their work during the bimonthly open studio format, OPENHAUS at ZK/U. The residency also covers travel and insurance costs. The JUNGE AKADEMIE team of Akademie der Künste Berlin will organize and curate the program and assist with visa applications as well as the coordination of the residency participation.

Call Release: Jan 17, 2022
Call Closes: March 17, 2022

Application: Artists can apply via this link. 

Residency

Two residency time slots are possible, but fellows may start working on their pieces as soon as the selected artists are announced. The project budget may thus be used before arrival in Berlin:

Residency stay 1: July to December 2022 (three residents)
Residency stay 2: January to June 2023 (three residents)

Curational Board

The call was developed in conversation with a curatorial board consisting of the following members:

Maya Indira Ganesh, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Course Co-Lead, AI, Ethics, and Society

Nora Khan, curator and writer of criticism on digital visual culture and the philosophy of emerging technology

Nora O Murchú, Artistic Director of transmediale festival, Berlin

Nishant Shah, Director of Research & Outreach and Professor of Aesthetics and Culture of Technologies, at ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands.

Jennifer Walshe, composer and musician, member of the Music Section of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Siegfried Zielinski, Professor for Media Theory, Archaeology, and Variantology of the Media at the Berlin University of the Arts, member of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Jury

Rosa Barba, artist and member of the Visual Arts Section of Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Oulimata Gueye, curator and art critic

Philip Horst, artist, co-founder and co-director of ZK/U Berlin

Jason Lewis, Prof. Jason Edward Lewis, University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary and Co-Director of the Indigenous Futures Research Centre, Concordia University, Montreal.

Jennifer Walshe, composer and musician, member of the Music Section of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Li Zhenhua, artist and curator

Artists will be selected and informed by May 1, 2022.

About the JUNGE AKADEMIE

Supporting young international art of all genres is one of the key missions of the Akademie der Künste, which it fulfills through the JUNGE AKADEMIE artist-in-residence program and by awarding work and residence fellowships. The program provides the opportunity to network with members and partners via the Akademie, to creatively exchange ideas in an interdisciplinary context and to develop and present artistic projects – in exhibitions, readings, performances, workshops, and open studios. A core aspect of the Akademie’s concept is safeguarding this free and protected space for artistic expression as well as exchange, artistic research, experimentation, and encounters across political and cultural borders.

The JUNGE AKADEMIE has explored the field of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts since 2019 within the Human-Machine program, which funds international artists of all disciplines who develop new ideas for patterns, narrations, and approaches to the world with intelligent machines. AI Anarchies connects to one specific goal of the Human-Machine program discussing the Ethical implications for AI. Artists interested in other fields of the Human-Machine relationship may apply to the Human-Machine program’s next call, which will be released in mid-March 2022, in collaboration with the VISIT program by the E.ON Foundation.

Head of the JUNGE AKADEMIE: Clara Herrmann

About ZK/U - Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik

The ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin is a place of art production, an artists’ and researchers’ residence and an experimental program platform that combines local creation with global discourses. ZK/U Berlin investigates existing forms of knowledge and practices in urban spaces as a springboard for the self-determination of the individual and the community. Also, it hosts a multidisciplinary residency program, offering a living and working space for practitioners of all kinds (artists, researchers, curators, activists, professionals of various fields) whose approach explores the dynamics and experiences of the city. The common theme and interests that link the work of ZK/U residents allow mutual learning, spontaneous collaborations, and exchanges to emerge, enriched by the diversity of disciplines and profiles of the residents.