Digital Earth is a six-month fellowship for artists and designers based in Africa or Asia working across a variety of media who would like to investigate our current technological reality. It is a unique research support program that helps experienced artists to reflect, research, experiment and produce work. The fellowship consists of a monthly stipend for work and production costs, mentorship and other various resources. The final results will be exhibited in a roaming exhibition.

Hivos, through its Resource of Open Minds (R.O.O.M.) program, is one of the organizations providing webinars, workshops and residencies.

Digital Earth calls upon divergent artists and designers to examine, challenge and respond to the material and immaterial condition of our current technological reality. The geographical focus of the fellowship is on the entanglement of old and new routes that connect Asia to Africa, crossing the Middle East and Central Asia. Today these routes are crossed by goods, people and data at speeds faster than ever, through a circuit of ports, mines, airports, refineries, high speed railways, fiber optic cables and mobile antennas.

Examples of possible research topics are: the infrastructure of Mongolian crypto-mining, the performativity of the robot-ports on the Siberian coastline, the soundscapes of the coltan mines in the heartlands of Congo, the cultural protocols of free port zones, the esthetics of satellite imagery, the agency of machinic vision, the political imaginations of geoengineering projects – and more.

Practical Info

Duration: September 2018 until February 2019
Number of participants: 15

Organizations that will provide webinars, workshops and residencies

British Council, Hivos, Ashkal Alwan, Electric South, Kër Thiossane, Strelka and The New Center for Research and Practice, more TBA. 

Research experts

Misal Adnan Yıldız, Defne Ayas, Stephanie Bailey, Diann Bauer, Nicolay Boyadijev, Benjamin Bratton, Jaya Klara Brekke, Oulimata Gueye, Brian Kuan Wood, Reza Negarestani, Mohammad Salemy, Moses Serubiri, Nishant Shah, more TBA

Details for applicants

Apply digitally, by emailing an application (no later than 19 August 2018 (23.59, CEST)) to:
info@thedigitalearth.org.

Please download the pdf for all the details of what the Fellowship provides, who is eligible, the selection process and how to apply. If you have any questions, please contact Renee Roukens Global Fellowships R.O.O.M. officer rroukens@hivos.org .