What is VISIT?

VISIT provides fellowships: VISIT is a fellowship programme run by the E.ON Stiftung. It provides young artists with the opportunity to create new work and pursue extraordinary projects.

In 2026, the JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste, VISIT, the fellowship programme of the E.ON Foundation and E-WERK Luckenwalde will once again offer four fully funded fellowships to international artists. The programme supports projects operating at the intersection of art, energy and ecology, with a thematic focus on the topic of the human machine.

If you would like to learn more about E.ON before applying, take a look at the website.

What VISIT provides

Mensch Maschine 2026: Mechanic Ghosts and Entangled Realities

The relationship between “natural” life and machines is complex and entangled, and has been the subject of art and artistic practice since the beginning of the modern Anthropocene. However, this relationship has been appropriated by the accelerated development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, extractivist ideologies, and hypercapitalism.

The Mensch Maschine programme seeks to return to an idea of intelligence, both human and “natural” in the arts, that allows us to explore technological future scenarios from an ecological perspective that places the planet at the center. In this context, AI is not considered artificial or intelligent, but rather as Scholar Kate Crawford suggests “both embodied and material, made from natural resources, fuels, human labor, infrastructure, logistics, history, and classifications” (2021, Crawford).

The call for proposals is aimed in particular at projects at the intersection of art, energy and ecology, which integrate realities, stories, histories, and myths from Europe and around the world, that address the social, political, natural, and cultural challenges of our time. How can we acknowledge and integrate the ghosts and ruins of our petro-cultural history in order to shape a regenerative future?

Grant

Successful fellows will be endowed with EUR 20,000. This grant is intended to be put towards production costs of a new project, which may include research and development, travel, material and presentation costs.

Studio

Selected artists will have a studio space at E-WERK Luckenwalde or at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin between April - June 2026. During these three months, the fellows are expected to be living and working in the studios for at least 75 % of the time.

Artistic Programme & Autumn School

Joint events will be planned at the Akademie der Künste and E-WERK with Open Studios and Retreats. In 2026, the focus of the public programme lies on a two-part transdisciplinary autumn school with a study group and invited experts taking place between Sept 1- 5 2026. Fellows will participate in the school at E-WERK as well as the second public part at Akademie der Künste.

New Partner: Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle

Starting in 2026, the Mensch Maschine programme will welcome the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle as a new European partner. Exchange residencies and joint public programme formats are planned. The aim of this partnership is to broaden public debate in Europe and to bring together Polish, cultural, and regional perspectives with new networks of artists and thinkers.

For many years, U–jazdowski has run an internationally recognized artist-in-residence programme, along with exhibitions and discourse formats in the field of contemporary and transdisciplinary art. The residency programme currently serves as a space for reflecting on coexistence, collaboration, and the relationship between humans and the non-human and posthuman world in the face of crises. Future projects will revolve around questions concerning possible strategies of coexistence and regeneration.

Programme

  • April-June 2026: Residency time at E-WERK or Akademie der Künste
  • Spring 2026: Open Studios at E-WERK & Akademie der Künste
  • Summer 2026: Network Meeting Warsaw
  • Autumn 2026: Autumn School & public programme


Timeline

  • 22 September 2025: Open Call Opens
  • 16 November 2025: Call Closes
  • 8-10 December 2025: Jury Meeting
  • Mid December 2026: Applicants informed
  • January: Successful applicant conversations


Artists of all disciplines are eligible to apply, with ideas focused on the conceptual theme of Mechanic Ghosts and Entangled Realities. For the new call, artists with a focus on sound, performance, film, and literature/poetry are particularly encouraged to apply

Artists can apply online from September 22, 2025 for the 2026 funding round. The application deadline is November 16.

Our jury

All applications will be reviewed by our independent and interdisciplinary jury. The jury currently consists of:

  • Nolan Oswald Dennis, artist & researcher
  • Chus Martinez, Head of the Institute Art Gender Nature, associate curator of TBA21
  • Sarah Johanna Theurer, Curator, Haus der Kunst, München
  • Anh-Linh Ngo, Vice President of the Akademie der Künste, architecture theorist & curator


Further jury members will be announced soon.

Cooperation: Junge Akademie

The JUNGE AKADEMIE supports international artists from all of the arts sections of the Akademie der Künste by providing residency and work fellowships as part of an interdisciplinary artist-in-residence programme. The three-month studio residencies offer fellows time, space and resources to focus on their art in a new environment. With this, the JUNGE AKADEMIE programme creates an open space for artistic research and the production of art and knowledge, which is actively shaped by each year's group of fellows together with mentors and members of the Akademie. It is an essential responsibility to maintain this free and protective space for artistic expression and exchange, experimentation and encounters across political and cultural borders. The JUNGE AKADEMIE has been dealing with questions about life and art with “intelligent” machines since 2019 with the Human Machine programme in cooperation with VISIT and E-WERK (since 2022). From 2022-2023, the JUNGE AKADEMIE organized the AI Anarchies programme on the topic of AI Ethics, which consisted of a fellowship programme with residencies at ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin in 2022 and 2023, a transdisciplinary Autumn School, as well as the exhibition “Broken Machines & Wild Imaginings” at Akademie der Künste in 2023, which also presented all Human Machine fellows since 2019.

New Partner in 2022: E-Werk

E-WERK Luckenwalde is located in a former coal power station built in 1913, ceasing production in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall. Located 30 minutes south of Berlin, Brandeburg, E-WERK Luckenwalde is jointly directed by artist Pablo Wendel and curator Helen Turner. In 2017, the art collective Performance Electrics gGmbH led by Pablo Wendel acquired the former brown-coal power station with the vision to reanimate it as a sustainable Kunststrom (art power) Kraftwerk to feed power into the national grid by burning locally sources waste wood chips to make electricity, and function as a large scale contemporary art centre. As part of POWER NIGHT in 2019, Performance Electrics gGmbH formally switched the power in the former factory back on. Since 2019, E-WERK Luckenwalde has curated and commissioned an annual contemporary art programme exhibiting artists including Lindsay Seers, Keith Sargent, Arantxa Etcheverria, Adelina Ivan and Alina Popa, Peles Empire, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Cooking Sections, Karrabing Film Collective, Isabel Lewis & Sissel Tolaas, Tabita Rezaire and Himali Singh Soin, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė, Lamin Fofana, Keiken, Henrike Naumann, Jenna Sutela, Lauryn Youden, L. Zylberberg, Peles Empire, Kira Freije, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Isabel Lewis, Paul Maheke, Harold Offeh, Bik Van der Pol, Nicolas Deshayes, Performance Electrics gGmbH, Lucy Joyce, umschichten, Nina Beier, Cecilia Bengolea with Craig Black Eagle, Performance Electrics, marikiscrycrycry in collaboration with Gareth Chambers, Charismatic Megafauna, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome with India Harvey and Josh Antonia Grigg, Rowdy SS and Nora Turato.

E-WERK also supports artist residencies, collaborating internationally to deliver, as well as curating performances, music festivals and workshops. A CO2 neutral music festival curated by Khidja took place in 2022 featuring Suzanne Ciani, Svitlana Nianio x Sergii Khotiachuck & Roman Gens, Dopplereffekt, ladr ache, Wojciech Rusin x Jo Hellier, Lena Willikens x Marylou and Alicia Carrera. In 2021, E-WERK hosted and curated the German premiere and only CO2 neutral performances of Golden Lion awarded opera Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė.

Kunststrom was founded in 2012 as a non-profit and CO2-negative energy provider. Renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, and wood gas are used to generate energy through art, installations, sculptures, and performances throughout Germany. Currently, Kunststrom supplies cultural institutions, companies, and private households throughout Germany. As a non-profit, all income from energy sales go into the production of Kunststrom and the contemporary art programme at E-WERK Luckenwalde.

Kunststrom is available through the energy cooperative Bürgerwerke. The switch is easy: go to https://www.kunststrom.com/switch.html to open our energy calculator and follow the instructions.