Open Call for Entries 2027
Application deadline: September 01, 2026, 23:59 p.m. (CET)
INHABIT #16
Residency period: April – July 2027
INHABIT #17
Residency period: September – December 2027
Duration: 4 months
Application deadline: September 01, 2026
Jury decision: November 2026
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Who We Are Looking For:
- Artists from the performing arts and music who are interested in interdisciplinary collaboration between the artistic and scientific fields;
- Artists who are open to developing and sharing a project in the form of an exhibition, performance, concert, or other format;
- Artists who are active in contemporary culture and respond to the institute with innovative and challenging ideas.
What We Offer:
- Artist’s fee: 8.000 Euro
- Accommodation fee: 2.000 Euro
- Production budget depending on the project
- Realization of the final project
- Travel costs to and in Frankfurt
- Collaborations with scientists
- Access to the library, sound studio and scientific facilities of the institute
- Curatorial support during the residency
How To Apply:
Please upload, no later than September 01, 2024, 23:59 p.m. (CET) your complete application, including
- your CV
- an artist’s statement describing your practice, concepts, and methods, etc. (max. 500 words)
- a description of the proposed project that outlines potential connections with the work of the Institute and the scientific interest (max. 500 words)
- a portfolio of your work (max. 20 pages).
If you have any questions, please contact: inhabit@ae.mpg.de
INHABIT // Artist-in-Residence
The INHABIT artist-in-residence program of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics invites artists from various disciplines to collaborate with our team of scientists and researchers. The integration of artistic thinking and knowledge as reflective practices in their own right is an important dimension of the institute’s mission.
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For this the presence of art and the inspiration and challenge of artistic practice are essential. The interaction between the different perspectives creates a mutually productive space for both artists and scientists to work in.
For this reason, INHABIT invites artists to spend three months creating new work, or further developing an existing project, in a scientific research environment. Openness to the mission of the institute and interest and readiness to work together with individual researchers or research groups are naturally preconditions. During the residency, the institute will provide space, resources, and facilities for productive experimentation, dialogue, and collaboration. Work developed during the residency will be presented in cooperation with various local arts institutions in the form of an exhibition, performance, concert, or other mode of presentation, and complemented by discursive formats.
INHABIT #14 // Baff Akoto
April - August 2026
At the intersection of moving image, sound, technology, and cultural memory, Baff Akoto explores questions of identity, resilience, and collective futures through a perspective shaped by African and diasporic narratives. His practice weaves together decolonial thought, speculative storytelling, and community-driven aesthetics, combining historical research, immersive technologies, and experimental formats to challenge dominant narratives and imagine new possibilities.
During the residency Baff Akoto is focused on developing and expanding the aural, oral and acoustic aspects of his ongoing body of work and maritime research project Power & Precarity, adding to his visual portrayals of communities at the intersection of maritime labour and global commerce. This ongoing project reflects on the precarity of labour traditions and the impact of economic and ecological scarcity - whilst contemplating the intertwined tensions between the industrial and the artisanal, the local and the global, the historic and the contemporary.
At the core of this residency, Baff looks at both the cultural significance of oral and aural work song traditions and how they encode working practices, hierarchies and lived experience. The work songs of the fishermen of Elmina, their rhythms and calls, hold stories that can be neither fully captured in archives nor in images alone. The resulting sound works will be brought into dialogue with Baff's visual art works to open up the space between the spoken and the unspoken, between industrial noise and the human voice as a distinct aesthetic and political territory in its own right.
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Biographie
Baff Akoto’s conceptual practice spans installation, immersive technologies, performance, printmaking, still and moving images.
His work extends beyond the art world, engaging with our increasingly digital behaviors and speculative futures, while fostering localized, public participation to question our shared histories. More recently, Akoto has been investigating the artistic potential of new technologies and digital media, with the hope that the digital revolution does not replicate the prejudices, exclusions, and inequalities already embedded in our industrial and colonial eras.
He was awarded the Aesthetica Art Prize for his film LEAVE THE EDGES, which also won the Grand Prix at the 13th Rencontres de Bamako, following its presentation at the London Open Triennale at Whitechapel Gallery. Akoto was also the recipient of the inaugural BFI x CHANEL Filmmaker Award, selected by a jury including Tilda Swinton and Edward Enninful.
![[Translate to English:] Newsbild BONES von Fabrice Mazliah](/fileadmin/_processed_/7/0/csm_NEWS-251007-Walkenhorst-Fabrice-Mousonturm-BONES-ohne-credits_2e3a6cd939.jpg "[Translate to English:] Newsbild BONES von Fabrice Mazliah")
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Jurys
The selection of artists for the residency at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics is made by diverse juries composed of researchers from the institute’s various departments, as well as distinguished experts from the fields of visual arts, music, and performing arts. The composition of the jury changes with each edition.