coExistence – Encounters between Human and Synthetic Agents, is an international artistic residency programme developed in collaboration between HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Basel, Switzerland), Pleamar (Mar del Plata, Argentina), and transmediale, supported by Pro Helvetia. The project proposes a space for creative research and artistic production exploring possible forms of coexistence between human systems, technological infrastructures, and sensitive environments. It invites the development of speculative narratives about future worlds, reflecting on both the tensions and bridges emerging in new forms of coexistence with our surroundings.

Bridging arts and science, the programme seeks to reframe synthetic worlds as spaces for empathy, dialogue, and mutual invention. It asks how artists and researchers can open up possibilities for trust, curiosity, and shared agency together with machines, artifacts, bots, and other forms of artificial intelligence. Through a series of residencies and new commissions, the programme aims to generate three original works that probe the boundaries of human-synthetic coexistence.

The project offers three artists the opportunity for the production of a new work and an on-site residency in one of the partner institutions. Working across different disciplines and geographies, the practices of the three selected residents explore how technological systems influence perception, infrastructures, and the ways we imagine and construct reality.

▫️Laura Benech (transmediale) works at the intersection of art and technology through digital media and installation, exploring emerging ecologies between code, material processes and technological infrastructures.

▫️Laura Cugusi (Pleamar) explores media ecologies and the institutional frameworks that shape contemporary imaginaries of the future at the intersection of art, science and technology.

▫️Simone C. Niquille (HEK) investigates vision technologies and computational imaging systems, examining how machine perception produces images and constructs representations of reality.