Organizer Information
transmediale is an annual festival and year-round cultural platform for art, digital culture, and media theory in Berlin, founded in 1988 as VideoFilmFest, a video and media art programme connected to the Berlin International Film Festival, which later expanded into multimedia, internet culture, software art, theory, performance, exhibitions, and research-based formats. The festival relocated to Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in 2002, and in 2004 the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) included transmediale in its funding programme for "beacons of contemporary culture," a status it continues to hold.
This residency is run in cooperation with the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK). The archive holds the estate of Prague-born philosopher and media theorist Vilém Flusser (1920–1991), including around 2,500 essay and book manuscripts, his complete publications, and his extensive correspondence, which are preserved and made publicly accessible in Berlin (alongside a mirror archive in São Paulo, Brazil). The archive relocated to UdK Berlin in 2007 and is housed at the university's Institute for Time-Based Media, functioning as a node of international Flusser scholarship, with Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann as its director since 2016. The Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research calls for transdisciplinary artistic research projects exploring emerging social concerns in culture, with artistic research understood as an exploration of connections between aesthetics, materiality, and politics.
Title & Description
Vilém Flusser Residency for Artistic Research 2027
This is the 14th iteration of the residency collaboration between transmediale and the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Universität der Künste Berlin. It will be awarded to one Berlin-based artist-researcher working in digital art and moving image practices, design, sound, or media theory. The residency is structured as a hybrid programme, combining remote work with an on-site month in Berlin at transmediale studio, and is framed by transmediale's 2027 thematic focus, "RFC 40" — an inquiry into how technical paradigms and cultural protocols might be reconfigured beyond extractive logics, moving from critique toward construction.
Theme
The residency is framed by transmediale's 40th-anniversary thematic focus, RFC 40, which takes its name from "Request for Comments," an early internet-history document series. The open call seeks proposals offering alternatives to how we understand, respond to, and shape the technological conditions we inhabit — asking how a network can remain legible to itself while the structures surrounding it break down, and how technical paradigms might be reconfigured toward new cultural protocols outside extractive logics, moving from critique to construction.
Categories
- Digital
- New Media
- Sound/Music
- Video/Film
- Design
- Research
- Technology
- Interdisciplinary Arts
Eligibility
- Open to one Berlin-based artist-researcher
- Working in the fields of digital art and moving image practices, design, sound, or media theory
- Open to artists, researchers, practitioners, designers, filmmakers, and sound artists, including all formats
- Applications from duos or collectives are welcome; the fee remains the same and must be shared accordingly
Program Benefits & Awards
- Artist fee of €1,500 per residency month (two-month residency)
- Presentation opportunity: residents present their work in a public event as part of transmediale's year-round studio programme
- Possibility of an online publication through transmediale's journal
- Residents are connected with institutions and stakeholders in Berlin's cultural scene during their stay
- Residency kicks off with a presentation of residency projects during transmediale festival in January 2027
- Note: no funds are available for travel and housing for the resident under this programme
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 28 August 2026
- Announcement of selected residents: October 2026
- Residency kick-off during transmediale festival: 26–31 January 2027 (recommended attendance)
- Onboarding and first hybrid part of the residency: May 2027
- Residency month in Berlin at transmediale studio (on-site presence mandatory): June 2027
- Second hybrid part of the residency, including reporting: July 2027
Location
Berlin-Wedding, Germany
Additional Details
- transmediale studio is a shared working space with modular working stations, used for events, presentations, gatherings, and the production of small-scale works and rehearsals.
- Residents will be selected by a jury of Mirjana Mitrović of the Vilém Flusser Archive at UdK; Sarah Grant, media artist, educator, and founder of Radical Networks; and Anna-Lena Panter, Head of Programme at transmediale.
- No travel or housing funds are provided for this residency, distinguishing it from transmediale's other 2027 residency programmes.
- For further information and questions, applicants can contact submit[at]transmediale.de.