Organizer Information
Akademie Schloss Solitude is a German public-law foundation founded in 1990 and housed in the Schloss Solitude palace overlooking Stuttgart. It runs an international, transdisciplinary artist-in-residence program that has supported roughly 1,700 artists and scientists from more than 120 countries since opening, working across visual, aural, digital, spatial, textual, and scientific practice. Alongside its physical residencies at the Schloss, the Akademie initiated the Web Residencies program in 2016 to support artists working with web-based and digital practice specifically, giving space to work that engages with net culture, technology, and society outside geographical and institutional boundaries.
Title & Description
Akademie Schloss Solitude Web Residencies Call No. 22 — »Ignore All Previous Instructions«
For the tenth anniversary of the Web Residencies program, curators !Mediengruppe Bitnik invite artists to create works that challenge extractive digital platforms and AI systems. The call revisits the founding question of the program's first 2016 edition — where to meet online when digital platforms are monopolized and weaponized — and asks how to interrupt dominant technological logics, from ad-tech surveillance to prompt injection vulnerabilities, in order to imagine alternative structures and communication methods. Proposals are expected to hijack, glitch, and disrupt rather than comply with existing systems, drawing on strategies such as Situationist "détournement."
Theme
»Ignore All Previous Instructions« — a call built around the prompt injection technique used to override an AI system's rule set, reframed as a starting point for artistic strategies of disruption, sabotage, and glitch aimed at extractive digital platforms and surveillance technologies.
Categories
- New Media
- Digital
- AI
- Technology
- Media Arts
- Interdisciplinary Arts
- Residency
- All Discipline
Eligibility
- Open to artists of all disciplines
- No age limit
- Individual artists or collectives may apply
- Only one submission per applicant (individual or collective)
- Applications with an already-existing project are accepted, provided the project is unfinished, process-oriented, and can be embedded in the Akademie's online environment
- Applications must be submitted in English, as the jury is international
Program Benefits & Awards
- Six project proposals will be selected
- Each selected project receives an online residency
- Each selected project receives a grant of 1,200 euros
- An online presentation of the project on the Akademie's platform
- Access to an optional one-day online coding workshop (September 17, 2026)
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 7 August 2026
- Jury Decision Announced (via email): September 2026
- Optional Online Coding Workshop: 17 September 2026
- Web Residency Duration: September 22, 2026 – October 22, 2026
- Web Residency Projects Launch: October/November 2026
Location
Online
Additional Details
- Applicants may submit only one proposal per applicant, whether an individual or a collective.
- The call is curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo), Berlin-based artists working on and with the internet, in collaboration with Sarah Donderer, Program Coordinator for Digital Cultures and Co-Lead of SCOPE at Akademie Schloss Solitude.
- The organizers recommend submitting well in advance of the deadline, noting that last-minute technical issues or questions may not be resolved in time.