Curatorial Project, Online Residency | 2021, 2022
Visit Next Cloud Atelierhaus
Visit Next Cloud Residency
2022 Next Cloud Atelierhaus. An online residency for Marxist oracles, Algorithmic Solidarity and more, Article, Régine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art
2022 TTM (Things, Time and Money) in Contemporary Society. An ethical turn in technological lush., Article, Vincenzo Estremo
Next Cloud Atelierhaus is a one-month online residency program hosted within the servus.at cloud and curated by S()fia Braga, Matthias Pitscher, and Davide Bevilacqua. Conceived as a temporary digital institution, the project invited five artists — Danae Tapia, eeefff, Cristina Cochior, Mary Maggic, and aaajiao — to inhabit and activate the servus.at infrastructure as both studio and exhibition space.
Rather than using the cloud as a mere storage environment, the residency approached it as a site of production, negotiation, and cohabitation. Participants were encouraged to explore the platform’s full range of tools — from chat and video conferencing to collaborative workflow systems — engaging with its architecture as artistic material. Structured around cooperation, the cloud instance became a shared atelier where processes unfolded collectively and in dialogue.
Throughout the residency, invited guests, including art critics Régine Debatty and Vincenzo Estremo, contributed to the project’s discursive dimension, expanding it beyond production into critical reflection.
With Next Cloud Atelierhaus, we sought to question what an Atelierhaus — traditionally understood as a physical studio building — might become when translated into networked space. How can an online residency operate natively within digital infrastructures rather than merely adapting to them? As a curatorial experiment in self-institution building, the project investigates how online environments can foster artistic exchange, institutional critique, and collaborative authorship specific to digital culture.
From the Residency to the Atelierhaus
The project builds on the Next Cloud Residency, organized throughout 2021 and founded and curated by S()fia Braga and Matthias Pitscher. Each month, a shared folder within the self-hosted servus.at cloud was entrusted to a different artist. Rather than functioning as a static archive, the folder operated as an evolving and unstable space: artists could upload new content, modify existing material, or delete what had previously been added. In doing so, they engaged with one another’s work in a spirit aligned with open-source ethics and Creative Commons principles.
Invited artists included: Clusterduck, Guido Segni, Exonemo, Mario Santamaria, JODI, Nahee App, MondayOFF, Sheeborshee, Letta Shtohryn, Irene Fenara, Francoise Gamma, and Stefan Klein.
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