04 - 05 May 2024
E-WERK Luckenwalde Open Studios

06 June 2024
Human Machine Open Studios
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, Studiofoyer

28 June 2024
Junge Akademie: Human Machine
Panel and Artist Presentation
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, Studiofoyer

The 2023/24 fellows for the Human Machine Programme of the Akademie der Künste’s JUNGE AKADEMIE, E-WERK Luckenwalde and E.ON Stiftung have been selected. The jury selected four artists from over 200 international applications to take part in the residency programme.

Artist duo Franziska Aigner & Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi will take residence at E-WERK Luckenwalde to explore the epistemological, aesthetic, and political possibilities of choreo-cinema from the perspective of a common and shared point of view—an archive of loss—assembled by the artist duo. The images assembled in the archive will range from personal memories to mediated historical narratives and serves as a point of departure from which one can remember and imagine, speculate and dream, and in so doing inquire into new forms and languages to contemplate loss and agency, individually and collectively.

The artist Sofia Isupova will work on a machine that maps parts of the terrain of Ukraine in the form of diagrams and drawings to visualise the day-to-day changes in landscape that are underway, reflecting not only the consequences of the Russian war of aggression, but also renewal, growth and life. The artist Maithu Bùi intends to spend the residency using artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, bioengineered organisms, robots as well as the role of participating marginalised population groups to help find and remove mines and explosive ordinances left behind by the war and deal with the resulting impacts on the environment. The artist, designer and scientist Rae Hsu investigates the social and ethical conditions of artificial intelligence; using specially developed parameters, she will develop a neural network as an “empathy machine” to highlight the paradoxes of empathic feeling.

The jury was made up of Anna Gritz, Director of the Haus am Waldsee; Anh-Linh Ngo, architectural journalist, curator, editor-in-chief, member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Tiara Roxanne, artist and researcher; Sinthujan Varatharajah, author and scientist, and Laura Helena Wurth, art critic and curator.

The Human Machine Programme is a cooperation between the JUNGE AKADEMIE, the international artist-in-residency programme of the Akademie der Künste, as well as the artist-in-residence program VISIT of E.ON Stiftung and E- WERK Luckenwalde, Zentrum für Kunststrom und zeitgenössische Kunst. The partnership promotes networking among artists and aims to explore issues of sustainability in the field of digital technologies. Each fellowship is endowed with 20,000 euros. The four artists will be provided with studios at E-WERK Luckenwalde as well as at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. A joint event is also planned.


Left: Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi by Thy Tran. Right: Franziska Aigner by Nadine Fraczkowski.


Maithu Bùi


Rae Hsu. Courtesy of James Corporan.


Sonya Isupova. Courtesy of Ankita Das