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BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS 2025
BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS brings together a “glocal” (global and local) network of cultural and research partners in Switzerland, India and Chile that seek to provide time and space for artists to develop space for research exploring the sensitive body and technical mediation in relation to public space. The project is a two-year collaborative initiative between NAVE (Chile), KHOJ Studios (India), Immersive Arts Space/ZHdK (Zurich, Switzerland) and Kornhausforum (Bern, Switzerland) and is supported by the Pro Helvetia Synergies Program.
About this edition
Khoj is now accepting applications for the second iteration of BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS.
BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS seeks to foreground practices and inquiries that can map the shifting terrain of digital life through critique and the articulation of alternate possibilities. As the digital mediates our perception, memories, and bodies, the boundaries between the organic and the machinic are becoming increasingly porous. BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS is an inquiry which has emerged from this urgency to understand how evolving technologies transform and reorganize what it means to be human, to inhabit gender, caste and other socio-ecological formations, in the 2020s and beyond, globally.
This is a part of a two-year collaborative multi-sited research initiative between NAVE (Chile), Khoj International Artists’ Association (India), and Immersive Arts Space/ZHdK and Kornhausforum (Switzerland), supported by the Pro Helvetia Synergies Program and offers artists time and space to develop research-driven practices that probe the entanglements of bodies, machines, and publics, in a ‘glocal’ context.
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Open for Applications
Khoj invites artists to critically examine and question the shifting entanglements between bodies, technologies, and systems of power for its upcoming residency – BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS.
In its second iteration, the program seeks to foreground practices and inquiries that can map the shifting terrain of digital life through critique and the articulation of alternate possibilities. As the digital mediates our perception, memories, and bodies, the boundaries between the organic and the machinic are becoming increasingly porous. BODIES-MACHINES-PUBLICS is an inquiry which has emerged from this urgency to understand how evolving technologies transform and reorganize what it means to be human, to inhabit gender, caste and other socio-ecological formations, in the 2020s and beyond, globally.
Can technology, ecology, and society exist in dialogue? In harmony, even?
What can feminist code offer in dismantling the patriarchal foundations of digital space?
As technologies and AI advances, how do surveillance systems extract intimacy from already vulnerable bodies, and what forms of resistance emerge?
In a moment when truth is unstable and realities are increasingly manufactured, what becomes of democracy? How is technology reconfiguring relations between centres and peripheries?
Khoj in collaboration with NAVE (Chile), Immersive Arts Space at ZHdK (Switzerland), and Kornhausforum (Bern), is part of a two-year long, multi-sited research initiative. The project offers artists time and space to develop research-driven practices that probe the entanglements of bodies, machines, and publics, in a ‘glocal’ context.
Artists from Chile, India, Netherlands, and the UK are welcome to apply for a fully-funded, seven-week, on-site residency taking place between October and December 2025.
Application Requirements
- A letter of motivation stating your personal drive as well as your expectations from the Khoj residency (maximum 300 words)
- An artistic proposal that will be developed during the course of the residency (maximum 500 words); this can include links to webpages and drive folders, files and documents etc.
- An updated CV
- A portfolio of 3-6 artistic projects
- Two reference contacts (Name, Relationship to the Applicant, Email, Phone Number)
Eligibility
- This application is open to artists from India, Chile, Netherlands, and the UK.
- This application is open to a diverse range of creative practices. Artists and creative practitioners with a focus on innovative concepts spanning objects, installations, artefacts, performances, screenings, and interventions within the realms of Interactive Art, BioArt, Hybrid Art, AI & Life Sciences, Sound Art, Net Art, Digital Communities, amongst others, are encouraged to apply.
- The selected artists must have an intermediate level of English.
Application Deadline: 20 July 2025.
For queries, write to applications@khojstudios.org
Khoj is grateful to Pro Helvetia, Switzerland, the British Council, and the Embassy of the Netherlands, India, for their support.
