KARLSRUHE.- To celebrate the centennial of artist Robert Rauschenberg’s birth (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008), the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe announces the launch of the Rauschenberg Residencies – a program that will take place in 2026 in the Department of Artistic Research and Development at the ZKM | Hertzlab. The residencies are inspired by the pioneering ideas of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit organization co-founded by Rauschenberg in the 1960s, and translate its collaborative ethos to the present day.

The Interconnectedness of Art, Technology, and Society

The Residencies program marks two anniversaries: the birthday of important and highly influential American artist Robert Rauschenberg, who would have turned 100 on October 22, 2025, and the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking performance series 9 Evenings, which led to the official founding of E.A.T. The performances took place in New York in October 1966 and brought together artists alongside engineers from Bell Laboratories, the former research department of the AT&T telephone company. Based on these historical milestones, the residency program explores how art, technology, and society are interconnected today.

The Rauschenberg Residencies

The residency program centers on three themes of E.A.T.'s Projects Outside Art, an open call for artistic projects with socio-political significance published in 1969, urban ecology, connecting people through technology, and play as social practice. Three international artists will be invited for a three-month residency at ZKM where they will engage with the questions raised by these historical projects. The aim is to develop new works that will explore these themes further from a contemporary perspective. The results may be presented in the form of prototypes, installations, participatory actions, or media interventions. The open call for the residencies will be forthcoming in December 2025.

Participants will have the opportunity to explore the E.A.T. archive, which has been housed at the ZKM since 1999. However, by engaging with this collection the program is not seeking to reconstruct the past, but instead to continue and expand this legacy into the future in a dialogue with current social, ecological, and technological challenges.

The Rauschenberg Residencies are supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and are part of the ZKM's ongoing commitment to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration between art, science, and technology.

In 2025, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation will celebrate Robert Rauschenberg's 100th birthday with an international celebration of the artist's far-reaching creativity, spirit of curiosity, and commitment to change. From 2025 through 2026, the centennial activities will view Rauschenberg through the lens of our time, highlighting his foresight and enduring influence on generations of artists and advocates for social progress.