Open Call: Dreaming Beyond AI - Residency

Coalition Building in Times of AI: Intersecting Struggles
Apply for artist-activist residency (digital & in person) hosted by Dreaming Beyond AI
Dreaming Beyond AI invites you to apply to its 2025 artist-activist residency that aims to explore coalition building in times of AI. We are looking for four artist-activists in residence who will work individually and together to interrogate this topic in a creative way from April to June 2025. 
 
Apply here: https://bit.ly/4dFyilQ

We embrace new and continued projects around the following topics:
    •    Supporting the production of tools for organizing against AI Violence and surveillance
    •    Nurturing coalitions of resistance impacted by technological harm
    •    Archiving digital knowledge and protocols on action for solidarity

We would like to invite applicants to artistically engage with the above topics and submit a short project idea that can be worked on within three months and will result in a creative output.
The residency will be compensated with a honorarium of 4000,- € (excl. VAT) and will take place online and offline: in person at Konvent residency space, close to Barcelona, Spain, and in the digital.

Dreaming Beyond AI (DBAI) is a collective and platform around technologies and their impacts that has been shaped by various artists, researchers, writers, activists, designers, scientists, community organizers, dreamers, and thinkers.
Marginalisation, individualism and binary thinking are products of colonial legacy, capitalism, hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy that unfortunately thrive in the technological world and that we strongly want to challenge and go against. In our current reality, many mechanisms of oppression are supported by algorithmic technologies. Be it in recruiting, healthcare or education, machine learning systems were found to exacerbate existing structural inequalities in society. To combat these systems of domination, it is imperative to thoroughly understand the underlying mechanisms of AI and its interactions with other systems of oppression, as it shows up in so many areas of our lives.
Where there are struggles, there is also resistance, and many formal and informal groups are fighting against dystopian tech futures. We are inspired by multicity flash strikes and demonstrations, by gig workers secretly tweaking the system, food delivery drivers creating informal unions, whistle blowing content moderators, and crowdworkers creating browser extensions to gather information about clients.
Hence, coalition-building, community and embracing nuances are fundamental principles and practices of our approach. We believe that art itself is uniquely suited to building bridges between different worlds: between academia and practice, between different topics, between complexity and low-threshold. Art, like activism, can see and draw connections where there were none before, or where they were not visible. Our aim is to catalyse the creation of connections and synergies by initiating a call for applications aimed at developing tools that will support and strategise around a multitude of struggles. 
By forming coalitions, activists, researchers, and practitioners can unite their efforts to effectively organise against the injustices produced through technological systems, share and develop critical tools of resistance online and offline, as well as building solid frameworks of community solidarity. Therefore, we are developing a residency for artists and activists to advance their work and actions in a fruitful fellowship together.
The vision is that our invitation to Dream Beyond supports the creation of life-bettering knowledge-sharing, alternative realities building and a love-led revolution towards liberated softer futures.
Within their residency, participants will receive creative sparring with the artists and activists Allapopp, Anasuya Sengupta, Seyi Akiwowo and Xin Xin. The residency is conceptualized by Dreaming Beyond AI and is realized in cooperation with ifa and Konvent.

Who can apply
The call is open to individuals, persons from self-organized groups, persons from collectives, who deal with societal issues in an activist, artistic, cultural-media, political-image, scientific, bodily/somatic or other way. We explicitly encourage applications from Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color / women and non-binary folks / LGBTQIA+ / dis_abled and emerging artists.
You can also apply as a duo, then apply together in the same application form. More than two people cannot apply together.
Can applicants be based anywhere in the world in order to apply?
Yes. We will announce the results as soon as possible after the jury decision to allow as much time as possible for visa applications; our partner organisations ifa and Konvent will also provide you with an invitation letter, if necessary. If the visa application is nevertheless rejected by the Spanish authorities, we will unfortunately not be able to influence this any further.
Residency honorarium:
 

The residents will each receive 4000€ excl. VAT. This honorarium remunerates for the in person week, the digital residency, a community presentation as well as communications efforts to promote the residency. 
There is also a budget of 500€ per resident for material costs of the artwork.
Traveling and accommodation costs for the in-person residency will be covered.
 
Residency timeline & duration:
The residency will consist of an in-person part and a digital part. In April 2025 residents, mentors and the DBAI team will start digitally to discuss their ideas, followed in May by 10 days in-person residency at Konvent, close to Barcelona, Spain. At the artistic residency space Konvent there will be time for brainstorming, crafting, discussing, relaxing, and working on the resident projects. 
The in-person residency week will be hosted by Konvent, a creative space based close to Barcelona. It’s a former nun’s convent that has been converted into an experimental laboratory where a diversity of projects converge, especially those which have no place in the frame of institutional culture.
The Residents and mentors will have the opportunity to present their artistic practice in a community event. After that, the residents will be again digitally accompanied by their mentors and the DBAI team, to finalize and produce their proposed work by the end of June 2025.
If you are unable to attend the in-person residency part, you will unfortunately not be able to participate in the entire residency.

Dates:
September 10, 16:30 CEST – We’ll be hosting an info call to provide all the necessary info and answer questions from anyone interested to apply – register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ucOGoqDgoG9N39ObXnarRjPWXg1tYo_qK
21. October 2024, 23:59 CEST – Application deadline
Mid November 2024 – We will notify the selected applicants
15. April 2025 – Official start of the digital residency. The selected applicants will be invited to join video calls with the DBAI team and the creative sparring/mentoring partners.
8-18. May 2025 – In-person part of the residency, close to Barcelona, Spain
June – Digital creative sparring sessions
End of June 2025 – End of residency with a digital presentation

Accessibility:
As a team, Dreaming Beyond AI believes in making the margins our center, transparency and intersectional feminist values. What that means in practice is that we do our absolute best within our available resources to work with/be in community with/amplify the work of/show love to/support folx who are Black and racialised, queer, living with different abilities, practice a religion that’s being persecuted, are gender diverse, neuroatypical, hold passports from countries still facing legacy of colonialism, etc.
That being said, our choice of venue for this residency will not allow us to honour our values regarding physical accessibility of the space.
Konvent is a beautiful but old space with unfortunately, lots of stairs, mainly to access the bedroom, common and kitchen areas. We regret that this will be limiting for people who cannot walk stairs on a daily basis or are in a wheelchair. We have been through different options of creating a cozy space on the ground floor but the space doesn’t allow it unfortunately.
There are plenty of places to retreat to in the accommodation and we will work flexibly with breaks in the schedule.
The residents will need to be able to travel to Barcelona, Spain, as well as participate in digital video calls. The residency is part time, since we know that you cannot put your life on hold. But we request commitment and your time to work on the project.
 
We will announce the results as soon as possible after the jury decision to allow as much time as possible for visa applications; our partner organisations ifa and Konvent will also provide you with an invitation letter, if necessary. If the visa application is nevertheless rejected by the Spanish authorities, we will unfortunately not be able to influence this any further.
In order to participate in the residency, it will be necessary to communicate in English with the other participants, the mentors and the organisers. There is no expectation to be fluent and grammatically correct, but comfortable enough to exchange and present. The DBAI team also speaks French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and none of us speaks English as our first language.
 
Can existing projects apply?
Yes, you can. Sustainability is important to us and we know how hard it is to get funding for continuing work that already exists. We encourage you to apply with existing projects, too. Please then outline how you plan to continue and improve the project within the residency.
 
Your application project:
Within this residency we invite artists-activists to develop creative and subversive tools for resisting, low-threshold information materials for engaging different audiences around the topic of AI, or methods for supporting coalition building across issues. Our dreams and goals with this residency are multi-layered and include:
    •    Archiving knowledge on action for solidarity 
    •    Protocols for organizing against AI violence 
    •    Tools against surveillance / for sousveillance 
    •    Nurturing coalitions in precarity for click and gig workers 
    •    Dreaming and visualizing soft and alternative realities

Expected outcome:
We would like to invite applicants to artistically engage with the above topic(s) and submit a short project idea that can be worked on within three months. It should result in an artistic output that can be displayed on the Dreaming Beyond AI platform (digitally), as well as offers the possibility to be shown in exhibition settings.
The work will be a commission, and one (digital/analog) specimen will remain with DBAI/ifa within the project Dreaming Beyond AI. The resident will remain author of their work, and will transfer a non-exclusive right to show the work to Dreaming Beyond AI and ifa within the framework of Dreaming Beyond AI.

Mentors
We offer the residents a creative sparring with four artists from the Dreaming Beyond AI community over the course of the residency. These artists will also be present during the in-person part of the residency and will be part of the jury for selecting the residents.

Dreaming Beyond AI is a multidisciplinary collective and collaborative web-based project founded in 2020 to bring together artists, researchers, activists and policy makers to develop new narratives and visions around AI technologies. The community project aims to understand the impact of AI technologies on inequality and to challenge mainstream AI narratives and imposed visions of the future.
For this residency program, Dreaming Beyond AI is cooperating with ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, as well as Konvent.

Informal Info Zoom Call
You can ask us everything about the residency in this informal open info call.
24. Sept. 2024 16:00 CEST
/ 15:00 BST / 19:30 IST / 22:00 CST / 10:00 EST / 7:00 PST 
Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ucOGoqDgoG9N39ObXnarRjPWXg1tYo_qK
 

Contact details for queries:
If you have questions about the residency or the application process, please send an email to hello@dreamingbeyond.ai

Bild @ Dreaming Beyond AI, Design: Iyo Bisseck