From the metabolic exchanges of ecosystems to the infrastructures that power digital technologies, energy is never neutral or isolated. It is material, political and ecological, entangled with the ghosts of extraction, labour, colonialism, myth and magic.

Today, our relationship to energy is increasingly shaped by accelerated technological development, artificial intelligence, extractivist economies and the demands of hypercapitalism. Mensch Maschine invites proposals that critically engage with these conditions while also imagining energy beyond its reduction to a technical resource or economic commodity. The open call encourages artists to approach energy as both a haunting presence and a relational force: one that connects human, more-than-human and technological worlds.

The Mensch Maschine VISIT Programme welcomes proposals from a broad range of artistic disciplines, including visual art, performance, film, installation, sound, writing and new media. We particularly encourage projects at the intersection of art, energy and ecology that explore the idea of ENERGY GHOSTS from multiple perspectives. These might draw on mythology, cosmology or speculative fiction to consider the unseen dimensions of energy, or examine the invisible infrastructures, histories and residues that continue to haunt contemporary life. We are equally interested in proposals that address energy as an ecological, political or spiritual force, revealing its capacity to shape bodies, landscapes and collective imaginaries.

Artists can apply via the application portal. The application deadline is 1 December 2026 11:59 pm.

Further information on the programme and application process – VISIT Website

About the Residency

The Mensch Maschine VISIT Residency Programme is an annual fellowship programme that offers four fully funded fellowships to artists from around the world, in partnership with E-WERK Luckenwalde (DE), the JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste (DE), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (PL), and VISIT – the Artist in Residence programme of the E.ON Foundation.

The programme supports projects operating at the intersection of art, energy and ecology, in response to the climate crisis and the rise of autocratic governance, the Mensch Maschine Programme seeks to critically engage with the term “Human Machine”; challenge Western paradigms and the dominant narratives of “progress” and “innovation”. The programme looks to encourage pluriversal approaches to digital technologies, imagining future systems and modes of societal regeneration that symbiotically integrate machines with the planet.

The jury for the fellowships includes:

Nolan Oswald Dennis, artist and researcher
Chus Martinez, Head of the Institute Art Gender Nature, associate curator of TBA21
Sarah Johanna Theurer, Curator of Contemporary Art at Fondation Beyeler, Basel
Anh-Lingh Ngo, Vice-President of the Akademie der Künste, architecture theorist and curator
Tiara Roxanne, Berlin-based scholar and artist

Grant

The selected applicants will be endowed with 20,000 euros. This grant is intended to be put towards artist fees and production costs of a new project, which may include research and development, travel, material and presentation costs.

Studio and accomodation

Three artists will have a studio space and accommodation at E-WERK Luckenwalde, one artist will be accommodated by Akademie der Künste in Berlin. The residency period will last from September till November 2027. During these three months, the fellows are expected to live and work on site for at least 75 % of the time and take part in the artistic programme.

Artistic Programme

Throughout the residency, events will take place at E-WERK Luckenwalde, the Akademie der Künste and Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Art. The residency will culminate in a symposium in October 2027 where the fellows will have the opportunity to show their work in progress together with the 2026 cohort.

Timeline and Important Dates

1 December 2026: Application deadline
January 2027: Jury meeting
End of January: Applicants will be informed

Mid-August – Mid-November 2027: Residency at E-WERK Luckenwalde or Akademie der Künste, Berlin
September 2027: Retreat programme at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw
Autumn 2027: Symposium at Akademie der Künste

About the Partners

E-WERK Luckenwalde

E-WERK Luckenwalde is a not-for-profit regenerative power station, contemporary art centre and Kunststrom research laboratory, established to pioneer alternative economic and ecological models for the cultural sector. E-WERK is located in Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, 40 minutes south of Berlin, in a former coal power station built in 1913, which has been reactivated as a regenerative power station by artist Pablo Wendel. 100 % Kunststrom heat and electricity is generated through a solar and wood-gas pyrolysis process to power the contemporary art programme and national grid, making it the world’s first center for contemporary art to generate its own electricity.

As a nonprofit institution, the E-WERK reinvests all revenue from energy production into its contemporary art and cultural programme. The programme, directed by curator Helen Turner, canvasses a diverse range of exhibition-making; from new architectural commissions, international residency programmes, gallery exhibitions, educational workshops, music and performance festivals and interdisciplinary research projects. Since 2022, E-WERK has been a partner of the Mensch Maschine VISIT Residency Programme, offering studio and accommodation spaces, mentoring and curatorial direction to the fellows.

JUNGE AKADEMIE

The JUNGE AKADEMIE supports international artists from all artistic disciplines represented at the Akademie der Künste through residency and working fellowships as part of an interdisciplinary residency programme. The three-month studio residencies provide fellows with the time, space, and resources to focus on their artistic practice in a new environment. In doing so, the JUNGE AKADEMIE creates an open space for artistic research and the production of art and knowledge, actively shaped by each cohort of fellows in collaboration with mentors and members of the Academy.

A central mission of the programme is to preserve this free and protected environment for artistic expression and exchange, fostering experimentation and encounters across political and cultural boundaries. Since 2019, the JUNGE AKADEMIE has explored questions of life and art in relation to “intelligent” machines through the Mensch Maschine Residency Programme. From 2022 to 2023, the JUNGE AKADEMIE organized the AI Anarchies programme on AI ethics, which comprised a fellowship programme with residencies at ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin, in 2022 and 2023, a transdisciplinary Autumn Academy, and the exhibition Broken Machines & Wild Imaginings at the Academy of Arts in 2023. The exhibition also featured all recipients of the Mensch Maschine Fellowship since 2019.

Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

In 2026, the Mensch Maschine programme welcomed Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) as a new project partner to broaden public debate in Europe and to bring together Polish cultural and regional perspectives with new networks of artists and thinkers. Since 2002, the CCA has been running an internationally recognized artist-in-residence programme, along with exhibitions and discourse formats in the field of contemporary and transdisciplinary art. The residency programme serves as a space for reflecting on coexistence, collaboration, and the relationship between humans and the non-human and posthuman world in the face of contemporary crises.

E.ON Foundation

The E.ON Foundation is dedicated to shaping social transformation sustainably, fairly, and with a European perspective. At the core of its mission is the transformation of energy systems – not only from a technical perspective, but also from a societal, ecological, and European one. In 2010, it launched its international artist-in-residence programme VISIT that funds artistic projects at the intersection of energy and societal regeneration. Through the Mensch Maschine VISIT Residency Programme, the foundation continues to support artists to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on ecological, social and energy transitions.

All documents are protected by copyright. The reprinting of texts and the copying of all other files is only permitted with the express permission of the Akademie der Künste or the authors themselves.

Open Call: ENERGY GHOSTSMensch Maschine VISIT Residency Programme 2027