Call for Applications: 2025/26 Artist-in-Residence at the Centre for Culture and Technology

University of Toronto

Lucas LaRochelle, Sometimes I forget what feeling felt like because I was never there when it happened. 2024/25 Artist-in-Residence exhibition. Installation view at the Centre for Culture and Technology, October 2024. Photo by Laura Findlay.

Call for Applications: Artist in Residence 2025/26

Extended Deadline: March 16, 2025
Residency Period: July 1 – October 15, 2025

The Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto (CCT) seeks applications for its fourth annual Artist in Residence. At the culmination of the residency, the artist will mount an exhibition of their work at the Centre for Culture and Technology’s Coach House, and will participate in Centre programming as detailed below.

The theme for our programming in the 2025-26 academic year is “Artificial Stupidity”. A full statement of the programming theme is available on the CCT’s website.

The residency is open to artists working in “media art,” very broadly understood. This includes work that uses electronics and digital technologies as its artistic medium, or that uses any medium to pose questions or draw insights about contemporary media technologies.

We are eager to receive proposals by artists whose work involves the critical deployment of machine learning technologies, or engages questions of smartness, intelligence, and/or stupidity. That said, we are emphatically not interested in work that uses machine learning technologies for their own sake, and any use of machine learning technologies is not a requirement. We are happy to consider work already in progress, or work newly developed for the exhibition.

The CCT Artist in Residence will be in residence at the Centre on campus at the University of Toronto from July 1 through October 15, 2025. The start date is negotiable, and can begin as early as June 1.

The studio and exhibition space will be the Coach House, a multi-use heritage building that was once Marshall McLuhan’s salon on campus. The Artist will devise and mount an exhibition to be installed in the Centre’s Coach House, opening on September 5 and closing on October 11, 2025. Successful projects will activate the space while respecting its limitations. To see photos of the exhibition space, please reference the exhibition documentation from the prior iterations of the residency: 2024, 2023, and 2022. A floorplan for the Coach House is available here.

The selection jury will consist of the CCT Director, the CCT’s Art and Technology Coordinator, and three members of the Centre’s Advisory Board. We expect the selection to take place by the end of March. All applicants will be notified of the results.

Lucas LaRochelle, Sometimes I forget what feeling felt like because I was never there when it happened. 2024/25 Artist-in-Residence exhibition. Exterior view at the Centre for Culture and Technology, October 2024. Photo by Laura Findlay.

Artist Support:

The Residency comes with:

• a stipend of $10,000 CAD
• a production and installation budget of $10,000 CAD
• logistical support for applying to OAC or other granting bodies for additional funds if needed
• dedicated curatorial support from the Centre’s curator
• studio and research assistance from Centre staff
• facilitated studio visits from University of Toronto faculty
• access to the University of Toronto libraries
• the invitation (but not the obligation) to participate in the Centre’s summer institute “Computer Class” in June 2025 (more information here)
• professional photo and video documentation of the exhibition
• publication of a book by the Centre documenting and engaging with the exhibition

Please note: the Residency is open to artists who do not currently live in Toronto (and has done so in 2022 and 2024). However, living and/or moving expenses will not be covered, and we cannot offer any assistance (logistical or financial) in securing housing during the residency period.

Artist Responsibilities:

Beyond the mounting of the exhibition, the Artist in Residence will:

• Collaborate with the Centre’s director to apply for funding in April 2025
• Make themselves available to host undergraduate and graduate class visits to the exhibition during September 2025
• Run a single 2-hour public artist’s talk or workshop on a topic of their choosing at one of the Centre’s Monday Night Seminars, in September 2025
• Participate in the Centre’s annual Fellows Retreat, in September 2025
• Write an extended artist statement, to be delivered as a public lecture at the Centre’s annual Fellows Day conference in April 2026
• Work with the Director of the Centre to prepare this statement for publication
• License the Centre to use documentation of the exhibition in Centre publications and publicity

Eligibility:

• The Artist must be eligible to work in Canada (e.g., Citizen or Permanent Resident; holders of restricted Work Permits are not eligible)
• The Artist must not be currently enrolled as a student at the University of Toronto
• The Artist may not hold a full-time staff or academic position at the University of Toronto (however, sessional instructors may apply)

To Apply:

To be considered for the residency, please submit the following by email to cultureandtech@utoronto.ca, no later than March 16, 2025 at 11:59pm:

• Single-page cover letter
• Project proposal of approximately 500 words (and not more than 750)
  ◦  Optional: supplementary material of up to 5 images
• CV
• A representative portfolio including up to 5 images and up to 2 video links

About the Centre for Culture & Technology

The Centre for Culture & Technology is dedicated to theoretical, aesthetic, and critical inquiry into the impacts of contemporary media on our interconnected world. This project is informed by the Centre’s location in the Coach House, a multi-use heritage building that was once Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s office and salon on the University of Toronto campus. The Centre draws inspiration from McLuhan’s humanistic intellectual and institutional legacy, continuing his stated goal of “investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies”.

The Centre promotes the study of media aesthetics in an expanded sense, examining the ways technological media shape contemporary experience by elaborating its histories, its problems, its infrastructures, and its politics. Offering both a setting and a framework, the Centre provides space and programming for scholars working in humanistic media studies across the three campuses of the University of Toronto and in the GTA. The Centre also supports the production of and conversation about contemporary media art, fostering aesthetic experimentation as a mode of inquiry.

Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto
39A Queens Park Crescent East
Toronto, ON M5S 3C3
www.cultureandtech.utoronto.ca
cultureandtech@utoronto.ca
Instagram @uoftculturetech