The Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art has awarded three six-months work grants for 2018. The grants of 10.000 Euro are sponsored by Stiftung Niedersachsen.  357 artists from all over the world have applied for the grants.

We are pleased to announce that the three award winners are Petra Bauer, Zach Blas and Daniel Jacoby.

Jury members:

• Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
• Edit Molnár, Edith-Russ-Haus
• Marcel Schwierin, Edith-Russ-Haus
• Joanna Sokołowska, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź

The Jury statement:

Sex and Drugs and Work Forever!

The jury was impressed both by the overall quality of the applications and also that many of the proposals shared similar concerns. In particular, there were a number of projects that sought to address working conditions in a technologically mediated society. The three awardees shared an interest in sex or drug-taking as activities that have been profoundly commodified in recent years. They all use artefacts or individuals from the modernist past as the lenses through which they try to read our current condition as individual workers active at different levels of society, from poorly paid sex workers to hyper productive (and sexualised) managers in Silicon Valley.

The grant projects:

Petra Bauer: Looking for Jeanne

Petra Bauer is interested in what has happened in the arts and society since Chantal Akerman´s iconic film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels was made in 1975. This film depicted the daily life of a woman as housewife, mother and sex worker almost half a century ago. The jury was very appreciative of the ambition to look for the contemporary Jeanne Dielman, whose life is still constrained by gender roles yet has been transformed by the global neoliberal order. Bauer proposes to realise a new film focusing on sex work today in collaboration with a community of sex workers in Scotland. This will be the first part of a film trilogy investigating the lived experience of gendered labour in Europe today.

Zach Blas: The Doors

Zach Blas´ immersive film installation will explore the appropriation of drugs and psychedelics in contemporary Silicon Valley. It will grapple with Silicon Valley´s appropriation of magic, mysticism, drugs, religion, cults and drugs to achieve a vision of a techno-utopian world. The Doors will orient itself around nootropics (or smart drugs), which are cognitive enhancers highly popular among the techno-elite. Nootropics like LSD are no longer connected to the 1960s counter-culture and its psychedelic belief in new "doors of perception". Rather they have become efficient delivery mechanisms to facilitate high-value individual workers to live, and therefore work, forever.

Daniel Jacoby: The Expression of an Egg

Daniel Jacoby directly addresses the world of digital sex work where isolated webcam sex performers set themselves up as small-scale entrepreneurs. This gives them a sense of independence but regularly results in self-exploitation, abuse, injustice and sexism. There has been very little artistic reflection on the phenomenon of webcamming despite it becoming a major industry. This project aims to approach the subject from an alternative, indirect perspective in the form of a fiction-driven experimental documentary. A script will be written by the artist and inspired by the Japanese modern classic The Face of Another by Kōbō Abe. It will be performed by webcammers in their own environments and infused with their own experiences and stories. The film will look for the glimpses of authenticity that slip through the cracks of the characters and scenarios that these webcammers carefully construct to protect their real selves from the public eye.

The grants

The Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art has awarded three six-months work grants for 2018. The grants of 10.000 Euro are sponsored by Stiftung Niedersachsen.
Stiftung Niedersachsen sponsors the grants at Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art continually since 2001. Many of the works developed in Oldenburg have been shown in international exhibitions and have been awarded various prizes.
With their support Stiftung Niedersachsen intends to encourage one of the leading sites for media art in Germany, in its highly qualitative profiling to make art creation possible and to create international networks as well as local cooperations.

For further information, please contact:
info(at)edith-russ-haus.de; Tel.: +49 441 235 3208

Past awardees of the Lower Saxony Grant for Media Art:

2022 Silvia Martes (NL), Lucy Beech (GB), James Newitt (AUS) more...
2021 Rana Hamadeh (LBN), Jim Jasper Lumbera (PHL), Hira Nabi (PAK) more...
2020 Ayọ̀ Akínwándé (NGA), Mochu (IND), Clara Jo (USA) more...
2019 Kim Schön (USA), Mario Pfeifer (DE), Viktor Brim (DE) more...
2018 Petra Bauer (SWE), Zach Blas (USA), Daniel Jacoby (PER) more...
2017 Noor Afshan Mirza/Brad Butler (GB), Stefan Panhans (D), Shirin Sabahi (IRN) more...
2016 Doireann O'Malley (IE), Zorka Wollny (PL), Amir Yatziv (IL) more...
2015 Mahmoud Khaled (EGY), Szabolcs KissPál (HUN), Anette Rose (GER) more...
2014 Derek Holzer (US), Ivar Veermäe (EE), Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa (GB) more...
2013 Marcello Mercado (ARG), Patricia Reis (P), Hannes Waldschütz (D) more...
2012 Kerstin Ergenzinger (D), Antoine Schmitt (F), Christoph Wachter/Mathias Jud (CH/D) more...
2011 Darsha Hewitt (CDN), Ute Hörner/Mathias Antlfinger (D), Yunchul Kim (KOR/D) more...
2010 HeHe (Helen Evans / Heiko Hansen), Frankreich / Deutschland, Ralf Baecker, Deutschland, Anahita Razmi, Deutschland more...
2009 Jana Linke (D), REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT (D), The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA (J) more...
2008 Petko Dourmana (Bulgaria), Kristin Lucas (USA), Cornelia Sollfrank (D) more...
2007 Jens Brand (D), Ellen Fellmann (D), Eddo Stern (USA/IL) more...
2006 Annina Rüst (CH), Corinna Schnitt (D), ubermorgen.com (CH/A) more...
2005 Amie Siegel (USA)
2004 Minerva Cuevas (MEX), Calin Dan (RO/NL), Martine Neddam (F/NL)
2003 Dave Allen (GB/D), Bernadette Corporation (USA/D), Naomi Ben-Shahar (ISR/USA)
2002 Johan Grimonprez (B), Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer (D/CH), Florian Zeyfang (D)
2001 Susanne Weirich (D) more...

Edith-Russ-Haus Awards for Emerging Media Artists of the Sparda-Bank

2015 Chris Alton (UK), Marta Popivoda (SRB) more...
2014 Adam Basanta (CA), Julian Stein (US) more...
2013 Hyun Ju Song und Mi Lyoung Bae (KR), Kuai Shen Auson Ortega (EC) more...

Exchange stipends with Digital Art Center Taipei, Taiwan:

2011 Tai-Wei Kan more...
2010 Yun-Ju Chen, Kerstin Ergenziger more...