The Democracy Machine

In the fall of 2021, we announced a radical experiment and three-year cycle of support for transdisciplinary art and activism: the handing over of our flagship residency to artists with the launch of The Democracy Machine . An inaugural cohort created a dynamic, evolving blueprint and strategy to unlock artist-led invention.

In Phase 2, a dozen artists, writers, and activists—pathbreakers from nearly every continent in the world—again took over the reins of Eyebeam’s flagship fellowship to crack open new art and ideas, exploring the movement to decolonize technology, rights to privacy and surveillance, the demand for more space and equity in society and culture, and more.

The second cohort of our radical experiment and multi-year cycle of transdisciplinary art and activism created to unlock artist-led invention in the areas of self-governance, technology, and democracy were selected last year by the cycle’s inaugural cohort of Black, disabled, and Indigenous artists to participate in a lively eight-month fellowship.

A diverse cohort—whose boundary-dissolving practices push the confines of their mediums and demand more space and equity in society and culture, from the bolstering Black art history in Columbia to the “possibility” of an anticolonial gaze and spanning a diversity of locations, such as Colombia, India, Nepal, and Peru and in U.S., Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City—were chosen by the inaugural 2021/2022 cohort. Each 2022/2023 artist received financial support, combined with profound professional development opportunities and the camaraderie and mutual support of a residency.

“We must give artists a rich space to imagine and contemplate how humans should live in the future if we are to create a different and more humane relationship to technology,” said Roddy Schrock of Eyebeam. “The new cohort hails from nearly every continent and have come together virtually to examine with us the relationship between humans, technology, and ethics and explore, as artists, social and cultural issues such as motherhood in the 21st century, sustainable technology, and healing and resistance within Black and Indigenous communities.”

Eyebeam invited the public to join us for the culmination of the current cohort of The Democracy Machine. Taking place over a single week, this free and lively four part series of special, one-hour live streams were broadcasted on Open.Eyebeam, our digital studio. Each stream featured up to four artists discussing their socially concerned art practices within the context of the fellowship, and how they set the terms for a fellowship built on trust and support.