n-Space Fellowship Open Call: Singapore Fellow

The first 3 months of the Fellowship are in-person at Somerset House Studios in London from April to June 2027. Flights, accommodation, airport transfers, travel cards and per diems are provided for the Singapore Fellow over this period. The remainder of the Singapore Fellowship will be conducted online, with a return trip to London in March 2028 for a presentation in the n-Space public programme. Flights, accommodation, airport transfers, travel card, and per diems are also provided for this period. Please note that this residency will be conducted in English and will operate on UK time.

A 9-month programme for a Singapore Fellow within the n-Space cross-disciplinary cohort of practitioners. Extending the Studios’ artist-led, community-driven ethos, the fellowship connects artists, academics, designers, and technologists, bringing together practitioners from different fields to support new thinking, collaborative research, and early-stage ideas.

This fellowship convenes a dynamic cohort of researchers and practitioners who are reimagining sociotechnical systems through hybrid, experimental, and cross-disciplinary approaches. Together, the cohort will be supported, individually and collectively, to explore methods, tools, and participatory processes that question dominant ways of producing knowledge and intervene critically in technology discourse. We are looking for propositions on how we might organise and imagine alternative futures in art, technology, and society. We believe these futures can only be built together, and welcome applicants who see collaboration as central to their practice.

This is a 9-month fellowship, in person at Somerset House Studios in London from April to June 2027, with the remainder of the Fellowship conducted online/hybrid.

The fellow will be expected to actively participate in the programme, with Fellows expected to attend c.80% of the programme sessions.

• April 2027: Fellowship commences
• April–June 2027: 3-month residency at Somerset House Studios (in-person)
• April–June 2027: Fortnightly collaborative workshops led by CCI, focused on transdisciplinary knowledge exchange and experimental design methods and facilitated by researchers at the Experimental Infrastructures research hub (in-person)
• May 2027: n-Space community welcome event at Somerset House Studios (in-person)
• July–September 2027: Fortnightly Artist Mentor sessions, led by artist Constant Dullaart (online)
• October–December 2027: Sessions return to the Creative Computing Institute researchers (online)
• January–February 2028: Work consolidation, with monthly online one-to-one curatorial check-ins (online)
• March 2028: Public presentation at Somerset House (in-person)

The Artist mentors are Constant Dullaart, and Somerset House Studios artists Gary Zhexi Zhang and Xin Liu.

Constant Dullaart (b. 1979, the Netherlands) is an artist whose practice examines how social and cultural values are embedded in tools, platforms and technologies. Working across installation, software, online environments and institutional forms, he creates an enjoyable friction between the manual and the automated, the real and the artificial, and the contemporary and the obsolete. His work critically engages the infrastructures and power structures shaping life online, including social media, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Dullaart lives and works between Amsterdam and Berlin and is professor of Networked Materialities at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. He also runs the artist-led platform common.garden and the online exhibition foundation Distant Gallery. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at MCA Chicago, Whitechapel Gallery, ZKM Karlsruhe, the Victoria and Albert Museum and MAAT Lisbon. In 2015, he received the Prix Net-Art from Rhizome, TASML and Chronus Art Centre

Gary Zhexi Zhang is a Somerset House Studios artist and writer, whose work draws connections between cosmology, technology and economy. His recent work examines how geopolitical imagination is shaped and mediated. He recently edited a book about finance and time, Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023). In 2026, Zhang leads a programme at TBA21-Academy researching West Mediterranean climate futures. He is currently writing a book about technoculture in a multipolar world, under contract with Berggruen Press

Xin Liu is a Somerset House Studios artist and engineer. Her practice works within the entropic aftermath of scientific and industrial ambition, foregrounding exhaust as a generative state: rocket fragments falling back to Earth; cryogenic vessels suspending organic matter; genomic code rendered as unreadable scripture; plastics dissolving under enzymatic digestion; satellites logging their own obsolescence. Her work operates across material and algorithmic systems. On the material level, she traces how matter is extracted, transformed, and degraded through processes of accumulation, decay, and redistribution. In parallel, she develops computational systems that enact these dynamics algorithmically, generating patterns of growth, erosion, and emergence through local rules and distributed interactions. Across both domains, Liu treats matter and computation as continuous substrates through which metabolic processes unfold.

All fellows will have access to a shared £30k R&D fund that can be used to support projects and research that emerge from n-Space. The Singapore fellow will produce an output for the n-Space public programme in March 2028. This output is not expected to be a finished artwork but could take the form of a prototype, software, a model, writing, process-based work, a project, or a research proposal.

The selected Singapore fellow will be required to share their outputs and learning with the Singapore arts community upon completion of the fellowship. The sharing could take the form of a public talk, presentation, exhibition, etc. The format will be discussed and agreed upon with the National Arts Council Singapore

n-Space is a shared workspace at Somerset House Studios, offering desk and meeting space with limited storage. Somerset House Studios also offers wider facilities, including a rehearsal space, recording studio (an engineer can be provided at cost), and meeting space. Access to Makerversity workshops and facilities can also be accommodated (inductions and workshop time will be allocated on a case-by-case basis).

The n-Space Singapore Fellow will be selected by the National Arts Council, Singapore, alongside Somerset House Studios.

Somerset House Studios is a space for experimentation in the centre of London, connecting artists, makers and thinkers with audiences. The Studios supports artists across disciplines to push bold ideas, engage with urgent issues and experiment with new technologies. At the heart of Somerset House, the home of cultural innovators, up to 70 artists are resident at any one time for a period of between one and seven years, with a number of shorter-term national and international residency programmes running alongside. The Studios develops ambitious cross-disciplinary projects and creative collaborations on a range of scales, and powers Channel, Somerset House’s online space for art, ideas and the artistic process.

UAL's Creative Computing Institute (CCI) Experimental Infrastructures is a UAL research hub reorienting investigative methods and computational practices to generate insights and interventions into emerging sociotechnical systems. We develop auditable forms of practice-led design research that interrogate the micro and macroscalar dynamics of more-than-computational infrastructures. From explorations of the materiality and ecological impact of infrastructure, to the cognitive models we develop in their wake (HAIID) we develop interfaces, installations, diagrams and prototypes that lead to public forms of knowledge dissemination..

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is a radical arts organisation situated in the North of England, working globally. We curate experiences, commission and incubate new art, cinema and sound, often through collaborations with emerging technology and science. AND are embarking on a two year curatorial partnership with SODA at Manchester Metropolitan University. As the first of its kind at the University, the creative partnership will produce a programme of public facing events and exhibitions that reflect AND’s unexpected and radically disruptive curatorial style.

National Arts Council, Singapore is a statutory board under the Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth that champions the arts in Singapore. The Council promotes artistic excellence by providing diverse opportunities for artists and arts organisations while expanding access for audiences to appreciate the impact of the arts in enriching lives. By working closely with the arts community and partners, the Council seeks to build a connected society, creative economy and distinctive city through the arts.

To support accessibility, prospective fellows can submit applications in audio or video format. Please get in touch with harry.leek@somersethouse.org.uk and chrystal_ho@nac.gov.sg for more information. The invited fellow can submit an access rider at the start of the programme to let us know what you need to fully participate, including reasonable adjustments to assist with communication methods and engagement in both digital and real-life elements. The London residency studio is a shared space accessible via one flight of stairs or lift access.

Six cross-disciplinary practitioners will join the n-Space Fellowship at Somerset House Studios. Five of the fellows will be London-based, with one selected through this open call in partnership with the National Arts Council, Singapore.

Singapore collectives may apply, but can only appoint one representative to participate in the fellowship