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We are pleased to announce ravyfairx, Jennifer Merlyn Scherler, Luiza Prado, and Lukas Rehm as artists-in-residence for the Digital Art Residency programme 2023 in collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Jennifer Merlyn Scherler is a research-based artist living and working in Basel. Their practice unfolds around fandoms, internet culture, and online identity. During the residency, Scherler will develop the research project that's where we found each other, in the same pain – exploring fandom and grief in video games. Investigating how these online spaces act as sites for collective mourning and emotional labour, their research will examine how fandoms establish beliefs and desires, their processes of commemoration, and their collective endeavour to reminisce and lament.

ravyfairx is a sound artist and performer based in Geneva. Exploring ideas of space, uncertainty, the illogical and irrational, ravyfairx will develop unexpectations – an immersive soundscape and performance. Constructed from field recordings from spaces emptied of human presence, unexpectations reassembles these sonic landscapes, their frequencies, and resonances, constructing an atmosphere that fluctuates between heightened states of agitation and absorption, and questioning how we engage with the illogical and irrational.

Luiza Prado is a Berlin based artist, activist, and researcher whose work explores food, infrastructures, and technology. In her new research, Empty Calories, she will focus on the increasing disconnection between the realities of food production and climate collapse and its widespread consumption as content on screens. Unfolding as a reality tv show, Luiza Prado will research the history of the luxury spice and medical cure-all – silphium – a once highly desired ingredient and delicacy in the ancient world. Tracing through the plant’s economic significance and eventual extinction, Empty Calories raises questions about the links between the anthropogenic extinction of species and plants and politics of distraction.

Lukas Rehm is an Amsterdam based artist and musician working with media, performance, fiction, and documentary. During his residency, he will develop new research exploring the ecological and psychological disruption brought about by alterations to technological means of observation. Inspired by mainstream Crime Genres, Patchedeyes is an in-depth investigation into the new states of nervousness and behaviour that come about as a result of being observed. Whether it's drones and their surveillance of warzones or online platforms during protests, the ever-presence of observation creates alteration in how we take action or react. Patchedeyes examines the theatre and drama of a nervous machine atmosphere, and the tensions between observation, agency, power, and judgment.

The residents were selected by Doreen A. Ríos, Simone C. Niquille, Sandra Küpper, and Nora O Murchú. The two-month hybrid residency will take place this summer throughout August and September at transmediale studio in Berlin and remotely. transmediale's studio is a shared working space, with the capacity to produce small-scale works, presentations, and events.