Call for proposals: Residency projects 2025-2026
CALL FOR LOCAL RESIDENCY PROJECTS 2025-2026
On a Human Scale
Deadline: Monday, May 5th, 2025 before 23h59 (Montreal, EST)
The Local Residency Program at Ada X is open to women, trans, non-binary, and queer artists exploring critical and experimental practices in media arts, digital culture, and feminist technological inquiry based in the Greater Montreal Area. Submit a project proposal for the chance to participate in an eight-week production residency at Ada X, taking place between September 2025 and April 2026.
Residency periods:
• September 2025-November 2025
• November 2025-January 2026
• February 2026-April 2026
2026 marks Ada X’s 30th anniversary and in celebration we would like to invite three artists to reflect on our 2024-2028 programming theme On a Human Scale. Today, we navigate a digital world shaped by corporate interests, surveillance capitalism, and algorithmic bias. The early internet’s utopian promise of free knowledge exchange and collective self-determination has given way to monopolized platforms, opaque decision-making, and extractive economies. These systems prioritize commercial interests, leading to disparities in access and participation.
On a Human Scale explores the interdependence of digital arts, equity, and community dynamics, highlighting how technology can foster empathy, inclusivity, and resilience while addressing systems of oppression and inequity. Inspired by (cyber)feminisms, queer studies, Afrofuturism, and anti-oppressive practices, it investigates how digital tools nurture collaboration, mutual recognition, and shared responsibility. Central to this theme is the transformation of dystopian narratives into grounded, hopeful realities rooted in the “here and now,” examining how technologies shape cultures, identities, shared values, and collective memories while preserving and reimagining local and global ecosystems. On a Human Scale envisions a world where digital innovation contributes to a sustainable, interconnected, and equitable society, supporting works and practices that strengthen relationships among individuals, communities, and the environment, while grounding technological advances in values of inclusivity, equity, and shared responsibility.
On a Human Scale asks:
• How can we create digital spaces that prioritize care, agency, and collective responsibility over profit and control?
• How can artists, activists, and technologists intervene in the digital infrastructures that shape our daily lives?
• How can we reclaim agency in online spaces, resist extractive models, and imagine technological futures based on shared governance?
On a Human Scale explores these questions through four key themes:
Political, Ethical, and Technological Reflections
AI is often positioned as either an inevitable advancement or a dystopian threat. What are the stakes of AI integration? What critical, ethical, and environmental choices do we have?
Community, Mobilization, and Digital Space
What does it mean to “opt out”? What are the real costs of our digital lives in terms of labor, energy, and surveillance? What tools and spaces allow for digital self-determination?
Slow Tech & Human-Scale Digitality
How do we resist the acceleration of digital systems? Can we return to slower, more intentional technologies such as RSS feeds, solar-powered servers, and handcrafted digital infrastructures?
Imagining and Rethinking the Web
From the early days of the web as a borderless zone to today’s increased energy consumption and digital waste, how do artists and activists navigate, reclaim, and reshape digital landscapes?
We invite artists to propose residency projects that engage with:
• AI and algorithmic interventions
• Digital autonomy and creative resistance
• Privacy and ethical tech
• Digital spaces on a human scale: Community-centered, open-source and decentralised technology,
• Slow tech, alternative digital infrastructures, and low-tech solutions
• Digital activism, slacktivism, mischief, and disruption as methods for critique and play
• Archiving and memory in online and offline worlds
• The material impact of digital technologies
• The role of artists in visualizing and intervening in technological systems
By blending artistic intervention, critical discourse, and hands-on experimentation, On a Human Scale is about actively shaping the digital world. It envisions a future where digital innovation contributes to a sustainable, interconnected, and equitable society. It supports works and practices that strengthen relationships among individuals, communities, and the environment while grounding technological advances in values of inclusivity, equity, and shared responsibility.
As Ada X enters its fourth decade, we reaffirm our commitment to technology that serves communities, working together to shape digital spaces that center people and collective agency. We invite you to take part in this collective process, shaping the future of digital spaces on a human scale. Three artists’ proposals will be selected. The Ada X team will meet each artist whose project is selected to determine the timeline for completion and production.
ELIGIBILITY
• Be a woman, queer, trans, or non-binary artist living in the Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal area.
• Have a practice in media arts. Media art refers to artistic practices that use technology to function. This includes kinetic art, computer art, digital art, electronic art, interactive art, installation art, multimedia art, cyber art, network art, biotechnological art, robotic art, and sound art. (Traditional linear cinema and audio-visual editing is not accepted)
• Be autonomous in the use of the equipment and technologies necessary for the project.
• Propose a project that is feasible with the material resources made available by Ada X (work plan, budget [including confirmed funding sources, if applicable], resources provided by the artist, and equipment required).
• Applicants must be the sole creators of any material submitted and own the rights.
• Applicants must not be enrolled in post-secondary education during the proposed residency period.
Please note: The space is NOT suitable for sound recording and/or multidisciplinary projects that would require a quiet environment.
SELECTION CRITERIA
• Consistency with Ada X’s mandate
• Quality of the artistic approach
• Relevance of the project in the context of media art
• Importance of the residency in the development of the artist’s practice
• Short-listed candidates will be asked to attend a selection interview
A residency at Ada X includes:
• A residency fee of $2995
• A workspace for a period of 8 weeks
• Support from the Ada X team (including feedback, mentorship, and consultation on grant applications and project-related matters)
• Access to Ada X equipment
• A production budget of $630 to cover professional fees for technical assistance and/or materials directly relate to the residency project
• A public presentation of the residency project (with additional honorarium)
• A text and video on the artist’s approach and the work produced during the residency
• Opportunity to attend free professional workshops
• Opportunity to design and present a mediation workshop (with additional honorarium)
• One-year membership offered after the residency for ongoing engagement in the Ada X community
Upon selection, the artist commits to:
• have an active presence in Ada X’s workspace for the duration of their residency,
• present in progress work with the Ada X team,
• participate in a video interview produced by Ada X during their residency to present their practice and work in progress,
To get a better idea of the type of projects Ada X supports, take a look at past residencies here.
Follow this link to see the gallery floor plan.
RESIDENCY PROJECT SUBMISSION
• Applications may be submitted in French or English.
• Applications can be individual or collective, but please consider that the fee is allocated per project.
• Applications must include completed form
• Do you express yourself better orally than in writing? We give you the option of answering several sections in the form of a short video.
In ONE PDF FILE (5MB), provide the following information:
• Project Title
• Type of media
• Stage of the project at the time of submitting this proposal (Design, Production Phase, Post Production Phase, Development of an existing Project)
• Describe your artistic approach, elaborating on your media arts practice. 300 words max.
• Situated within your media arts practice, present your residency project, demonstrate how you would use Ada X’s resources to carry out your project. 500 words max.
• How does your proposal and practice relate to Ada X’s feminist mandate and the programming theme, On a Human Scale? 200 words max.
• What are your technical requirements for the residency? This includes the equipment needed to produce the work and support required (e.g. support from a technician or programmer).
• Work plan according to the duration of the proposed residency Curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages)
Visual/audio documentation :
• Documentation must reflect relevant media arts practices as proposed in the application.
• 10 images – JPG format – Identified as follows: 01_lastname_firstname; and/or audio and/ or video files: up to 5 excerpts of a maximum duration of 3 minutes. Please provide passwords if applicable.
• Descriptive list of visual/audio documentation: name, title, media, context of distribution, year.
***PLEASE FILL THIS FORM REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS AND QUESTIONS REGARDING THE RESIDENCY***
NON-CONFORMING FILES WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.
Send us your application in ONE PDF file (5 Mb maximum) to appel@ada-x.org
Email subject: Application for local residency 2025-2026
Deadline: Monday, May 5th, 2025 before 23h59 (Montreal, EST)