Call for projects: 2026-2027 residencies
Call for Local Residency Projects 2026-2027
On a Human Scale
Deadline: Monday, April 13th, 2026 before 23h59 (Montreal, EST)
The Local Residency Program at Ada X is open to women, trans, non-binary, and queer artists exploring critical and experimental practices in media arts, digital culture, and feminist technological inquiry based in the Greater Montreal Area. Submit a project proposal to participate in an eight-week production residency at Ada X, taking place between September 2026 and June 2027.
Residency periods:
- September 2026 – November 2026
- November 2026 – January 2027
- February 2027 – April 2027
- April 2027 – June 2027
2026 marks Ada X’s 30th anniversary and in celebration we would like to invite four artists to reflect on our 2024-2028 programming theme On a Human Scale. On a Human Scale explores the interdependence of digital arts, equity, and community dynamics, highlighting how technology can foster empathy, inclusivity, and resilience while addressing systems of oppression and inequity. Inspired by (cyber)feminisms, queer studies, Afrofuturism, and anti-oppressive practices, the theme investigates how digital tools can nurture collaboration, mutual recognition, and shared responsibility. We encourage approaches that value knowledge sharing, open-source practices, and collective learning, while resisting gatekeeping around technologies and creative tools. Rather than reinforcing dystopian narratives, the theme focuses on grounded possibilities in the present, examining how technologies shape cultures, identities, collective memory, and local ecosystems. We welcome projects that approach technology critically while also embracing play, humour, experimentation, or creative mischief to imagine alternative digital futures.
On a Human Scale explores these ideas through three key themes:
World-Building and Digital Liberation
Rooted in (cyber)feminisms, queer futures, Afrofuturism, and anti-oppressive practices, how might artists imagine alternative technological worlds? How can digital tools support liberation, care, and collective futures? What possibilities emerge when dominant technological narratives are challenged or reimagined?
Archives, Memory, and Community Histories
How are histories recorded, lost, or reshaped in digital spaces? What stories remain overlooked or fragmented across online and offline environments? How might artists engage with archives, storytelling, and community memory to create new ways of sharing histories and building collective memory?
Digital Ecologies and Technological Futures
Digital technologies are embedded within broader ecological, social, and political systems. What infrastructures sustain our digital lives, and what environmental or labour conditions remain hidden behind them? How might artists reveal these systems, question their impacts, or imagine alternative digital ecologies through practices of repair, reuse, and maintenance?
We invite artists to propose residency projects that engage with:
• Collective, participatory, and community-led technological practices
• Knowledge sharing, collective learning, and accessible approaches to technology
• Archiving and memory in online and offline worlds
• Playful or humorous approaches that use creativity as a form of resistance
• Community-centered, open-source, or decentralized digital spaces
• Artistic interventions in technological systems
• Digital autonomy, refusal, and creative resistance
• Privacy, care, and ethical approaches to technology
• Digital activism, slacktivism, mischief, and disruption as methods for critique and play
• The material, environmental, and labor impacts of digital technologies
By blending artistic intervention, critical discourse, and hands-on experimentation, On a Human Scale invites artists to imagine liberatory technological futures inspired by (cyber)feminisms, queer studies, Afro futurism, and anti-oppressive practices. As Ada X enters its third decade, we invite artists to explore collective forms of care, resistance, and world building while rethinking how digital technologies can support more equitable communities and environments.
Eligibility
Applicants must:
• Be a woman, queer, trans, or non-binary artist living in the Tiohtià:ke/Montreal area.
• Have a practice related to media arts. Media art refers to artistic practices that use technology as a primary medium. This includes kinetic art, computer art, digital art, electronic art, interactive art, installation art, multimedia art, cyber art, network art, biotechnological art, robotic art, and sound art. (Traditional linear cinema and audiovisual editing are not accepted.)
• Be autonomous in the use of the equipment and technologies necessary for the project.
• Propose a project that is feasible with the material resources available at Ada X (work plan, budget including confirmed funding sources if applicable, resources provided by the artist, and required equipment)
• Applicants must be the sole creators of any material submitted and own the rights.
• Applicants must not be enrolled in post-secondary education during the proposed residency period.
*Please note: The space is not suitable for sound recording and/or multidisciplinary projects that would require a quiet environment.*
Selection Criteria
• Consistency with Ada X’s mandate
• Relevance of the project in relation to the programming theme On a Human Scale
• Quality of the artistic approach
• Relevance of the project in the context of media art
• Importance of the residency in the development of the artist’s practice
Short-listed candidates will be asked to attend a selection interview
A residency at Ada X includes:
• A residency fee of $3360 CAD
• A workspace for 8 weeks
• Support from the Ada X team (including feedback, mentorship, and consultation on grant applications and project-related matters)
• Access to Ada X equipment
• A production budget of $630 CAD to cover professional fees for technical assistance and/or materials directly related to the residency project (upon approval)
• A public presentation of the residency project (with additional honorarium)
• A text and video on the artist’s approach and the work produced during the residency
• Opportunity to attend free professional workshops
• Opportunity to design and present a mediation workshop (with additional honorarium)
• One-year membership offered after the residency for ongoing engagement in the Ada X community
Upon selection, the artist commits to:
• Have an active presence in Ada X’s workspace for the duration of their residency,
• Present in progress work with the Ada X team,
• Participate in the monthly 5@tech during their residency,
• Participate in a video interview produced by Ada X during their residency to present their practice and work in progress.
To get a better idea of the type of projects Ada X supports, take a look at past residencies here.
Follow this link to see the gallery floor plan.
Residency Project Submission
• Applications may be submitted in French or English.
• Applications can be individual or collective, but please consider that the fee is allocated per project.
• Applications must include completed form.
Do you express yourself better orally than in writing? We give you the option of answering several sections in the form of a short video.
In one PDF file (5MB), provide the following information:
• Project Title
• Type of media
• Stage of the project at the time of submitting this proposal (Design, Production Phase, Post Production Phase, Development of an existing Project)
• Description of your artistic approach and media arts practice (max. 300 words)
• Description of your residency project and how you would use Ada X’s resources to carry it out (max. 500 words)
• How your proposal relates to Ada X’s feminist mandate and the programming theme On a Human Scale (max. 200 words)
• Technical requirements for the residency (equipment and support needed)
• Work plan according to the duration of the proposed residency
• Curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages)
Visual/audio documentation :
Documentation must reflect relevant media arts practices as proposed in the application.
• 10 images (JPG format), identified as: 01_lastname_firstname
and/or
• Up to 5 audio or video excerpts, each with a maximum duration of 3 minutes (please provide passwords if applicable)
• Include a descriptive list of documentation: name, title, media, context of presentation, year.
Non-conforming files will not be considered.
Send your application in ONE PDF file (5 Mb maximum) to appel@ada-x.org
Email subject: Application for local residency 2026-2027
Deadline: Monday, April 13th, 2026 before 23h59 (Montreal, EST)