What noise is actually cancelled from the world by noise-cancelling technology? What tactics can we use to trick biased AI hiring bots? How can the reinterpretation of archaic cultural contexts shed new light on our present? These are some of the exciting questions the artists selected for the EMAP 2024 residencies will work on. Other selected artists will create synthetic rainbows, collect biological traces and memories in a pandemic archive or explore topics such as compost as superfood, exhausted landscapes and the link between time and weather.

This year's RIXC Centre for New Media Culture selected artists of the year are Agata Konarska and Jakub Kosecki. Artists have joined in the project Technospiritual Visionary, within which they create both material and virtual experiences, based on the reinterpretation and recycling of archaic cultural contexts, searching for new applications for them.

Agata Konarska (Poland) engages in artistic activities using various media, such as video, sound and performance, through which she creates interactive situations and virtual realities. She examines the phenomenon of women's iconicity, searching for the anthropological genesis of matriarchy and its references in the Anthropocene era. Jakub Kosecki (Poland) is a visual artist, musician and curator. As a visual artist he creates installations and objects, using found objects, assemblage, sculptural techniques and drawing. As part of his musical activities, he creates electronic compositions and experimental site-specific music installations. In 2020, together with the curator Julianna Kulczynska and the Luka collective, he founded Luka 5G, a virtual space for art. At the RIXC residency, the artists, using Egyptological and archaeological sources, explore the identity of the ancient Egyptians, revealing similarities with modern society, using a theoretical/autotheoretical approach that involves applying concepts from the distant past to a contemporary context. They investigate multi-layered soul of the ancient Egyptians, comparing it with the bureaucratic, personal, psychological and legal layers of contemporary post-human identity. As a result, the artists will create an immersive artwork called "The Book of the Dead: Virtual Gates" - an installation that will present the world composed of metaphors of modern technology that can be found in Egyptian mythology.

EMAP, co-funded by EU's Creative Europe program, supports critical collaboration projects by emerging artists in video, digital, robotics, bio and other media arts. Since 2018, 75 projects have been commissioned, receiving over 30 international awards and exhibited at prestigious institutions. The 16 selected media artists from 42 countries will participate in a 2-month, fully-funded residency with an EMAP partner and exhibit in group shows in the next 2 years.

EMAP artists for the 2024 residencies:

Antre Peaux (Bourges, France)
● Fleur Melbourn

Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria)
● masharu

CIKE Creative Industry Košice (Košice, Slovakia)
● Leon van Oldenborgh

gnration (Braga, Portugal)
● Luiz Zanotello

iMAL Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology (Brussels, Belgium)
● Johanna Bruckner

IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
● Benedikt Terwiel

Kersnikova Institute / Kapelica Gallery (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
● Vivien Roussel

KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis (Zagreb, Croatia)
● Karolina Żyniewicz

LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre (Gijón, Spain)
● Lukas Truniger

m-cult (Helsinki, Finland)
● Andreas Zingerle

NeMe (Limassol, Cyprus)
● Rosemary Lee

Onassis Stegi (Athens, Greece)
● Bettina Katja Lange

RIXC Centre for New Media Culture (Riga, Latvia)
● Agata Konarska and Jakub Kosecki

Werkleitz Centre for Media Art (Halle/Saale, Germany) in collaboration with transmediale (Berlin, Germany)
● Ali Akbar Mehta in collaboration with Jernej Čuček Gerbec

WRO Art Center (Wroclaw, Poland)
● Christian Skjødt Hasselstrøm

Guest host 2024: ISSS Indonesia Space Science Society / HONF Foundation (Yogyakarta, Indonesia)
● Adriana Knouf

About European Media Art Platform

The European Media Art Platform (EMAP), initiated by Werkleitz and co-funded by Creative Europe since 2018, is a consortium of leading European media art organisations specialising in video, digital art, robotics, bio art and other forms of media art. The consortium has 15 members and over 80 partners, and it includes renowned festivals, laboratories and institutions that investigate and present these interdisciplinary art forms. Through an open call, EMAP members offer emerging artists two-month residencies to support the production of new projects and the development of their professional careers. EMAP is built on the legacy of the European Media Artist in Residence Exchange (EMARE) which has existed since 1995. EMAP also acts as a platform for members and partners to select artists and works for festivals and exhibitions they organise. In addition to production support for artists, EMAP provides an international platform for collaboration and the promotion and dissemination of media art. 

More information: https://emare.eu/