For the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2018, we are pleased to announce that jury members Kristoffer Gansing, Anna Gritz and Maren Hartmann have selected the collaborative duo Viktorija Šiaulytė and Marta Dauliūtė, for their residency project proposal Good Life.

In this ongoing research and documentary film project, the artists are undertaking an investigation into the narrative of innovation and flexibility, its social and political implications. Through interviews, ongoing discussions and group workshops with a selected group of entrepreneurs of the tech startup scene, Šiaulytė and Dauliūtė map the relation between their own position of struggling to deal with the self-management imperative and those who see it as an ever growing business opportunity. At the heart of the Good Life project lies the question: how can one share critical analysis with the people whose worldview is radically different?

For their residency, the artists have proposed to continue the dialogue around their film in Berlin, conducting further research, conversations and workshops, involving the startup scene of the city. This kind of dialogue as an exchange of information played a crucial role in Vilém Flusser’s theories throughout his entire oeuvre. Here, dialogue seeks to create new information that gives a revolutionary character to it: “Revolutionary, because dialogue tries to leap from a contradictory level (doubted information) to a new, thetic level (that is, new information accepted by those who participate in the process)” Vilém Flusser.

Similarly, Šiaulytė and Dauliūtė seek to challenge their own preconceptions and that of others by bringing different lifeworlds into dialogue with one another. The jury was especially impressed by their intersectional approach which encompasses sociology, economy, psychiatry, political science and activism.

The residency program is a cooperation between the Vilém Flusser Archive at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and transmediale, festival for art and digital culture Berlin.