International open call: science_technology_society

Delfina Foundation is pleased to announce an international open call for its upcoming winter 2025 residency season (January 6–March 30) under its recurring thematic programme science_technology_society.  
 
On this occasion, Delfina Foundation welcomes applications from artists, curators, researchers, technologists, activists, writers, and thinkers who seek to explore how emergent technologies effect our understanding of mental wellbeing, and who are interested in probing the potential for intersecting art, science, and technology to reimagine mental health support, justice, and pride. 
 
About the residency theme  
We live in a time in which mental suffering appears to be both increasingly profound and ever proliferating. It is common to hear arguments about how the development of digital technologies has exacerbated our mental health crisis—as they drastically shape our sense of self, social relationships, as well as living and labouring conditions. Those same technological advances, however, are often held up as offering solutions, including through opening up new possibilities of forging connections, building support systems, and addressing marginalised needs. UK writer Micha Frazer-Carroll contends that while some new tools might help people fulfil the social construct of “mental health,” they cannot address the root causes of the suffering, harm, or oppression. Meanwhile the fields of art and activism, there is a growing interest in engaging with disability justice discourses, crip theory, anti-racist thinking, and queer theory to rethink mental justice and Mad politics.
 
Against the fast-evolving sociopolitical, technological, and discursive backdrop, the winter 2025 residency season at Delfina Foundation invites practitioners to depart from the following questions: how could we re-examine the conceptualisation of “mental health” today? What new mental landscapes could we envision? What forms of radical Mad knowledge and structures of care could we produce?   
 
Delfina Foundation’s thematic programmes 
Delfina Foundation’s residency programme is structured around the four seasons of the year. Within this, occasional twelve-week seasons bring together groups of practitioners under a specific theme to collectively engage in a shared area of interest. Current recurring themes include: Performance as Process, Collecting as Practice, The Politics of Food, and science_technology_society. The ambition of the thematic seasons is to create a focused environment that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange among practitioners from around the world who can offer different approaches and insights. These ongoing programmes build on each other, creating an ever-evolving hub for incubating ideas and connecting an international network of practitioners. 
 
Delfina Foundation’s winter residency season 2025 (6 January to 30 March) sees the third iteration of its theme science_technology_society.  
 
About Delfina Foundation 
Founded in 2007, Delfina Foundation hosts artists and creative practitioners from around the world in it home in central London: providing essential space and support for experimentation, research, & development; facilitating vital networks and dialogue across the art world and society; presenting new artists, art, and ideas to local and global audiences; and nurturing long-standing global communities of artists and creative practitioners. 
 
Residency details 
This opportunity is open to practitioners from around the world as well as across the UK. This season will support a minimum of eight practitioners, whose practices have already engaged with aspects of art, science, technology, and mental wellbeing, and who make strong proposals for how they will use this opportunity to explore ideas within the stated theme. 
 
The selected international candidates will be offered a fully-funded three-month residency at Delfina Foundation in central London, including visas, flights, accommodation, local travel cards, stipends, and materials allowances. Applicants based in the UK will be considered for non-residential participation in the programme and will be paid a fixed fee of £3000 for their involvement, plus reimbursements for pre-agreed travel costs required for their participation.
 
Application process 
To apply please read the guidance notes document in full (available here) and complete and submit the online application form. 
 
The deadline for applications is 11:59pm BST on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Recieved applications will be reviewed by members of the Delfina team and invited relevant experts. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an online interview in June. Applicants who have not made the shortlist will be notified at this time. All interviewees will be notified as to the success of their application by early July.