Open Call: PRELIFE Artist Collaboration Programme

The PRELIFE consortium invites applications for the Artist Collaboration Programme, part of the PRELIFE project.

PRELIFE is an interdisciplinary research consortium that investigates the origins and early evolution of life through approaches such as computational modelling, laboratory experiments, geological fieldwork, and astronomical observations.

The PRELIFE Artist Collaboration Programme offers artists the opportunity to engage deeply with scientific research into the origins of life, as independent researchers contributing their own perspectives and forms of knowledge. The programme is developed in partnership with the Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT) and is grounded in the belief that artistic practice is a form of inquiry akin to science.

The programme creates a shared space where artists and scientists engage through curiosity, experimentation, and critical reflection. The programme supports open-ended artistic research that can challenge and expand scientific perspectives.

Image by: August Strindberg

1. Vision Statement

The PRELIFE Artist Collaboration Programme invites artists to engage with interdisciplinary research on the origins of life as a space for artistic exploration, speculation, and knowledge production. Rather than positioning art as a tool to illustrate scientific results, the programme approaches artistic practice as a form of inquiry in its own right. Artists and scientists are brought together in a context of reciprocal curiosity, where disciplinary boundaries can be challenged and expanded, and reframed.

Within the PRELIFE consortium, artists can encounter diverse research environments: From computational modeling and laboratory experiments to field observations and technological development. These encounters can open a shared space for imagination, critical reflection, and experimentation.
The programme seeks artists who are interested in engaging with scientific contexts while maintaining the autonomy of their practice. Through collaboration with researchers and interaction with societal partners and broader audiences, the participating artists contribute to expanding how questions on the origin of life can be addressed, perceived, interpreted, and communicated.

Ultimately, the programme aims to cultivate a dialogue in which artistic and scientific practices mutually inform one another, creating new ways of thinking about and perspectives on the themes explored within PRELIFE.

2. What is offered

• Three artist residents within the PRE-LIFE project;
• Duration: working periods spread over approximately 12 months;
• Budget: €30,000 (VAT included) per residency (including artist fee, materials, travel and production costs, possible rent for infrastructure);
• Access to the PRELIFE research network and facilities on approval by partner;
• Opportunities for exchange with fellow artists and scientists, subject to availability, including Inge Loes ten Kate, Floris van der Tak, Thanja Lamberts, Sonja Geilert, Renee Hoekzema, Alessandra Candian, Bram van Dijk, Mariëtte Wolthers, Bart Root, Rick Quax, Wim van Westrenen and Ko-Ju Chuang, Agnes Hendrickx, Martijn Egas, Sijbren Otto and Ahmed Dibajeh.
• Project management and curatorial support in developing public-facing outcomes.

Notes:

• Artists are contracted on a freelance basis (not as employees).
• If applications involve more than one person, e.g. in the case of artist collectives or existing art-science collaborations, one applicant acts on behalf of the group.
• The budget per residency mentioned above is lumpsum.
• Pre-selected candidates will be invited for an interview on 26 or 28 October 2026.

3. What we are looking for

We are seeking artists who:

• Have an established artistic practice;
• Are interested in engaging with scientific research contexts;
• Can work independently while collaborating with researchers;
• Approach art as a speculative, critical, and exploratory practice;
• Are open to long-term engagement and process-based work;
• Have demonstrable experience with projects in science;
• Are willing to work within one of the frameworks of the Caradt Research Groups (see below).

We explicitly encourage practices that move beyond traditional “art–science” formats and embrace experimentation and new forms of knowledge production.

The proposed project needs to respond to one of the below frameworks, each coming from one of CARADT’s research groups:

A. Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI)

Drift & Lust: Speculative Drive and Factual Resistance in Art–Science Collaboration

Human beings are critical and cultural beings, constantly transcending themselves, projecting themselves into a future that is qualitatively different from past and present. However, our current technological and economic trajectory increasingly reduces the endemic openness of the human to quantitative, measurable characteristics a source of energy for standardized production.

This reverses the negenthropic trajectory of (human) life, putting us on a regressive path toward a future without a future, where a less-than-human existence runs the danger of falling back into the abyss of pre-life. In a strange way, humanity has finally discovered time travel as a collective one-way trip to the moment before it all began: an undifferentiated pre-life soup. It is powered by the AI meat grinder that turns thousands of years of human inventiveness, creativity and beauty into the terror of eternal identity: sameness, stasis, slob.

Yet, there is also a more complex understanding of humans as energetic beings who invest their energy in their environment, their fellow human beings or other projects. Psychoanalysis and philosophy refer to the study of this as libidinal economy.

CARADT research group Cultural and Creative Industries is looking for an artist in residence who is capable and willing to explore this libidinal approach at the intersection of science and art as an antidote to the nihilist return to pre-life. The following research questions are meant to be inspirational demarcations for this residency:

• How can drift (restlessness, the urge to repeat, transgression) and lust (desire, pleasure, emotional attachment) function both as a subject of research and as a method of collaboration between an artistic mentality (open, associative, critically speculative) and a scientific approach (empirical, systematic, verifiable)?
• What is your perspective on how the arts and sciences can drift into liminal spaces that are mutually generative and educational for both sides?
• How do you desire to break the somewhat traditional paradigm established between art-science relations and what might that look like in practice?

B. Situated Art, Design and Technology (SADT)

Situated Artistic Inquiry in Origin-of-Life Research

The Situated Art, Design and Technology research group invites an artist to take up a situated, embedded position within the consortium, engaging critically with the conditions under which knowledge of life’s origins is produced. In origin-of-life research, data is generated through instruments, experimental setups, and conceptual assumptions that determine what becomes visible and meaningful. Artistic practices have long interrogated such processes, exposing the limits of measurement while opening alternative ways of sensing and knowing.

This collaboration centers on the question: How do we measure and interpret what we cannot directly observe? The artist will engage with scientific practices to examine how instruments mediate reality, how data is constructed, and how speculation operates within scientific reasoning.

The artist will work from within PRELIFE’s research environment, engaging closely with researchers while maintaining an independent artistic perspective. Through artistic methods, the collaboration will interrogate measurement, mediation, and knowledge production, using practice as a means to question and reframe epistemic assumptions.

The programme offers space to critically and creatively reimagine the epistemic foundations of origin-of-life research, contributing alternative modes of inquiry and understanding through artistic practice.

C. Regenerative Art and Design (RAD)

Emergence, Self-Organisation, and Prebiotic Systems

The Regenerative Art & Design research group focuses on how dynamic interactions among abiotic (non-living) components of ecosystems can give rise to self-organising, emergent biotic (living) processes. Working with scientists investigating the origins of life and complex physico-chemical systems, the group positions prebiotic systems as experimental environments for exploring emergence, complexity, and relationality. The collaboration invites artists and designers to engage with prebiotic systems as embedded design laboratories, exploring how generative processes and emergent behaviours can inform new ways of understanding life’s origins and the transition from non-living to living systems.

The participant will develop a design intervention that engages with emergent conditions and behaviours, working with tensions between chaos and order and adopting a systemic–relational perspective. Through close collaboration with the PRE-LIFE research cluster, the artist/designer will investigate hidden processes, in-between dimensions, and the generative dynamics of complex systems, translating these into artistic or design processes.

The outcomes may take the form of installations, artefacts, or other formats that render perceptible the dynamic and generative nature of these systems. They should evidence process-oriented, relational thinking, translate complex dynamics for broader audiences, and be materially grounded in environmentally attuned design practices, contributing to public engagement with the emergence of life.

4. Collaboration framework

About the PRELIFE-project:

How, when, and where life emerged is one of the most fundamental open questions of humankind. How life originated on Earth out of non-biotic processes and circumstances is a problem that has inspired scientists across many disciplines for centuries, but that remains unsolved. To close in on this problem, the scientific community has focused on understanding abiotic pathways, reactions, and environments that are used by life as we know it, and that may have existed on the abiotic early Earth1. The Netherlands harbours many scientists working on specific areas of the origin of life, but they focus on a theoretical or modelling approach, a specific process in the laboratory, or a certain set of observations, with little interaction, whereas precisely these interactions may lead to new hypotheses on origin of life enabling environments on and beyond Earth. The PRELIFE consortium aims to unify this dispersed, highly interdisciplinary scientific community in the Netherlands that studies the pathways, reactions, and environments (PRE) that led up to, and were available when life emerged, to identify the ultimate ‘PRE-life hotspot(s)’ and to identify the key knowledge gaps in our pathway towards understanding life’s origin. These disciplines include astronomy, biology, chemistry, Earth and (exo)planetary science, educational science, information science, mathematics, and physics. To reach our main objective PRELIFE consists of sixteen projects to tackle fundamental questions, combining computational studies, computer modelling, laboratory experimental research, astronomical observations, and the development of educational tools to transform the interdisciplinary understanding of origin of life research. To optimise the interdisciplinary cross fertilisation, each project combines specialists from at least two scientific disciplines.

The main scientific question PRELIFE addresses is:
‘How and under which conditions did life emerge on Earth and how common are these conditions across the universe?’

The main objective of PRELIFE is:

To unite the currently fragmented community of origin-of-life researchers in the Netherlands into an integrated, interdisciplinary consortium that tackles bottleneck questions on the origin of life and engages with society to transfer this knowledge to the public.

Artists will engage with researchers across the PRELIFE consortium. Possible contexts include:

• Computational simulations and modelling
• Experimental laboratory environments
• Geological and (optional) field research
• Astronomical observation
• Instrument and technology development

Collaborations may vary in intensity, from close work with specific researchers to broader engagement with the research ecosystem.

5. Outcomes

The programme supports open-ended outcomes, while encouraging forms that can be shared with partners, peers and audiences.

Possible formats include:

• Artistic works or prototypes
• Exhibitions or public presentations
• Performative or participatory formats
• Publications or hybrid outputs
• Public engagement activities

The emphasis is on process, exchange, and exploration, rather than predefined deliverables. The artist is expected to document and archive the project’s outcomes, ensuring that relevant materials and documentation are organized and made available in an accessible format.

6. Practical conditions

• Activities must take place in the Netherlands;
• Applicants must be based in the Netherlands or able to work there without relocation support;
• Applicants should be able to invoice within the Netherlands;
• Applicants must have advanced English communication skills;
• Artists are expected to participate in:
  • Collaborative activities with researchers
  • Programme moments (e.g. group sessions, meetings)
  • Public engagement and dissemination.

7. Submission criteria

Applicants are asked to submit:

• A concept note in PDF on your intended research within the PRELIFE consortium of 500 words maximum that touches upon:
  • Research question
  • Research approach
  • Reflection on how your research relates to one of the three research groups (CCI, SADT or RAD) themes and on its relevance to PRELIFE
  • Expected outcomes
• A portfolio in PDF of relevant experience of 2 A4 maximum
• A draft budget in PDF

8. Selection criteria

Applications will be evaluated based on:

• Artistic quality and relevance of practice
• Strength and clarity of the proposal
• Relevance to PRELIFE
• Feasibility within the programme framework, budget and timeline.
• Openness to collaboration and experimentation

The selection process will be conducted by an interdisciplinary jury composed of representatives from PRELIFE and Caradt.

9. Timeline

• Application deadline: 20 September 2026
• Notification of shortlisted candidates: between 5 and 9 October 2026
• Selection process and interviews: 26 and 28 October 2026 in Utrecht
• Programme start date: 1 January 2027
• Programme end date: 31 December 2027

10. Further information

• More information about CARADT:
  https://caradt.nl/
• More information about PRE-LIFE:
  https://www.originscenter.nl/prelife/
• For questions, please contact: Van den Boogaard, E.S. (Eva) es.vandenboogaard@avans.nl

11. How to 

To apply for the PRELIFE Artist Collaboration Programme, please submit the following documents via the online application form:

• A concept note (maximum 500 words, PDF), outlining:
  • Your research question;
  • Your proposed research approach;
  • How your project relates to one of the three CARADT research group frameworks (CCI, SADT or RAD) and its relevance to PRELIFE;
  • The expected outcomes of your project.
• A portfolio (PDF, maximum 2 A4 pages) demonstrating relevant artistic practice and previous experience.
• A draft budget (PDF) outlining how you intend to use the residency budget.

Applications must be submitted no later than 20 September 2026.

Apply via the online application form

This publication is part of the project PRELIFE (Pathways, Reactions, and Environments leading to LIFE: An interdisciplinary approach) with file number NWA.1630.23.013 of the research programme NWA L1 – Onderzoek op Routes door Consortia 2023 – NWA-ORC 2023, which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the grant ID https://doi.org/10.61686/PXRUC21696.