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Counterstructures Residency
The Counterstructures Residency provides creative technologists with resources for prototyping and developing a project over the course of 6 weeks. As AI systems increasingly shape how knowledge is created, remembered, and shared, communities need new ways to challenge increasingly predictive and deterministic systems to center human agency and thought.
About this programme
The Counterstructures Residency provides creative technologists with resources for prototyping and developing a project over the course of 6 weeks. As AI systems increasingly shape how knowledge is created, remembered, and shared, communities need new ways to challenge increasingly predictive and deterministic systems to center human agency and thought.
The Delhi edition of the Counterstructures Residency invites artists to respond to and develop prototypes that engage with either one or both of the following thematic inquiries: Retaining Cultural Authority, exploring how communities can retain agency over what is digitized, interpreted, reused, or kept private; or Remembering and Thinking With Machines, investigating where human judgment enters systems increasingly shaped by AI and what forms of knowledge are transformed or lost in the process. The Counterstructures Residency provides creative technologists with resources for prototyping and developing a project over the course of 6 weeks. Projects could take many forms, but should investigate or act as a counter to the questions illustrated in the thematic tracks.
Counterstructures operationalizes learnings from participatory assemblies in that same region into thematic tracks for creative technologists. Our assemblies with G5A in Delhi and Mumbai surfaced the following pain points to investigate:
Retaining Cultural Authority
Guiding Questions
- What happens when oral, embodied, or community-held knowledge is converted into datasets or other machine-readable forms?
- Which cultural materials become visible to AI systems, and which don’t?
- How might communities retain authority over what is digitized, interpreted, reused, or deliberately kept private?
Remembering and Thinking With Machines
Guiding Questions
- Where does thought reside when people think with machines, and at what stages does human judgment enter the system?
- What forms of cultural or professional knowledge are lost when judgment is standardized through automated systems?
Apply for the Counterstructures Residency, organized and hosted byKhoj International Artists’ Association (Khoj) in partnership with Mozilla Foundation. This program will run weekly in Delhi from October 1, 2026 to November 12, 2026, with a final presentation of finished projects on November 13-15, 2026.
Open for Applications
Khoj International Artists’ Association, in collaboration with Mozilla Foundation, invites applications for the Counterstructures Residency, a six-week programme for creative technologists to prototype and develop projects that question how AI systems shape the ways we create, remember, interpret and share knowledge.
The Delhi edition invites artists and creative technologists to respond to one or both of two thematic tracks:
Retaining Cultural Authority — exploring how communities can retain agency over what is digitised, interpreted, reused or kept private.
Remembering and Thinking With Machines — investigating where human judgment enters systems increasingly shaped by AI, and what forms of knowledge might be transformed or lost in the process.
The residency offers time, resources and support to develop experimental prototypes that engage with these questions and imagine ways of working with, against or beyond increasingly predictive and deterministic systems.
Projects may take a range of forms, but should critically respond to the concerns outlined in the two thematic tracks.
Residency Dates: 1 October–12 November 2026
Application deadline: 13 September 2026
Please note: This opportunity is for Indian nationals only.
