The Thematic Residency Program “Mutations” is a cooperation between the Akademie Schloss Solitude, an international and transdisciplinary artists’ residence based in Stuttgart, and the KfW Stiftung, Frankfurt, an independent non-profit foundation which focuses on intercultural dialogue and artistic production in the global context.

From October 2020 to June 2021, seven international artists and creative thinkers have been engaging, both locally and digitally, with the topic of mutations through immersive group labs. To define the mutational is, at its most basic, to set apart a condition at odds with an established order. In the life sciences, this translates to alterations in chromosomal sequence, molecular transformations in cells, tissues, and organisms that are tracked within empirical contexts construed by modern science. Yet embedded in the idea of mutation are blind spots underpinning the designation of order itself. This is true not only in conceptual terms, disciplinary methodologies, or institutional priorities, but also through socio-political configurations that frame what is deemed disparate or exceptional in the first place.

“Mutations” is comprised of the following fellows: