In addition to our ongoing Vilém Flusser Residency Programme with Universität der Künste Berlin, we are delighted to announce that we are expanding our residency programme for the upcoming edition of transmediale festival. These additional opportunities are part of our newly developed approach for creating a more sustainable infrastructure for supporting artistic practices. The first transmediale residents to join us are Bassem Saad and Natasha Tontey.

The Residency Programme, in collaboration with Martin Roth Initiative (MRI), supports artists-in-virtual-residence to promote artistic and cultural activities – particularly under challenging socio-political conditions. The residencies was hosted by transmediale from October to December 2020. During that time, each artist developed a new video work that is part of transmediale's 2021–22 exhibition for refusal.

Throughout the Residency, Bassem Saad aims to develop a video essay that looks at historical and contemporary moments in which different social groups conceptualised, demanded, and practiced “democratic biopolitics.” As well as forms of radical healthcare, mutual aid, horizontal social welfare, and collective care, the work looks at rioting and political violence as legitimate forms of mobilisation that a population may resort to when faced with no other options. The work will adopt a multi-scalar and heterarchical structure, thinking through collective lifemaking and revolt. The piece presents an alternate version of historic events shaping the present moment, and keeps a close eye on the possibility of insurrectionary activity and alternative organizing within, and despite, contemporary disaster capitalism.

Bassem Saad is an artist and writer born on September 11th and trained in architecture. His work explores objects and operations that distribute violence, pleasure, welfare, and waste. Through video, sculpture, and writing, he investigates and records strategies for maneuvering within and beyond governance systems.