Ali Akbar Mehta is the 2024 EMAP scholarship holder at Werkleitz

Werkleitz is part of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP), which runs an annual two-month residency program at 16 media art institutions across Europe. Our EMAP grant holder for 2024 has now been confirmed and we are looking forward to welcoming the media artist, curator and researcher Ali Akbar Mehta to Halle next year in collaboration with Jernej Čuček Gerbec.

The project of his residency is called PURGATORY EDIT and is a user-generated, montage-based film installation that demonstrates the ways in which digital technologies enforce subliminal visual manipulation, sensory overload, data fatigue, psychological response and ideological numbness. It is inspired by the Ludovico technique - a fictional technique of negative aversion from the film "A Clockwork Orange" (1971). As a speculative installation, PURGATORY EDIT parodies the Ludovico Technique and draws parallels to the cult film's dystopian narrative to explore the boundaries between addiction and aversion, enforcement and neglect, inclination and phobia. PURGATORY EDIT raises the question: "How can the artistic imagination influence the politics of power, violence and justice?" The work is thus located at the intersection of art and science and revolves around peace and conflict studies, archival practices, contemporary art, artistic research and neuroscience.

More about EMAP and the 2024 artist selection