Berlin | AI Anarchies residency call

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 Commissioner 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 couldall 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.

DEADLINE: March 17, 2022

Visiting / 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)