science_technology_society

Delfina Foundation is pleased to announce an international open call for its upcoming winter 2025 residency season (6 January – 30 March) 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, within 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 this fast-evolving socio-political, 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.