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 residents to join us are Bassem Saad and Natasha Tontey.

We are very happy to present two transmediale residents: Bassem Saad, based in Beirut, Lebanon, and Natasha Tontey, based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. 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.

For the residency, Natasha Tontey focuses her research on the indigenous practice of the Minahasa tribe, an ethnic group based on North Sulawesi, known for its economy of stone. Their stone-based trading and communication system is a mixture of New Age practice, capitalism and a spiritual connection to the Gaia. Minahasa culture is also known for cosmological thinking and the political system of Mapalus, which is the the act of knowledge transfer through volunteerism and mutual aid. Mapalus is a social currency that formed the foundation of Minahasa’s gift economy, where transactions are based on trust and reciprocity. Tontey’s video-based work will explore the dynamics of Minahasan cosmology through the perspective of contemporary digital culture, looking at its potential to imagine an alternative world where anthropocentrism barely exists.

Natasha Tontey is an artist and graphic designer based in Yogyakarta. She is interested in exploring the concept of fiction as a method of speculative thinking. This investigation brings forward the fictional account of the history and myth surrounding ‘manufactured fear’ and looks at how it determines the expectation for the future.