Open call: SOMA Summer 2026, Mexico City

SOMA Summer is a summer school conducted in English that weaves together theoretical inquiry, artistic practice, and the discussion of contemporary global issues. It is an intensive four-week program held in Mexico City and designed for artists, writers, curators, scholars and other cultural practitioners who seek to go beyond comfort zones in order to broaden their disciplinary perspectives, encounter positions different from their own, and revisit their creative processes.

Towards a Planetary Consciousness for Hyper-Mediated Times

We are living in a time traversed by multiple crises whose brutality is, for many, not new. However, rapid developments in media technologies, the intensification of social media use, and the escalating scale of climate-change-induced disasters have increased global awareness in unprecedented ways. At the same time, borders are being fortified, and divisions between those who experience those crises to an extreme and those who are not are becoming stronger, often justified in the name of risk management and the promise of “certainty” and “security.” At a moment when minds, bodies, territories and even time itself are increasingly organized through forms of separation and restriction, SOMA Summer 2026 asks: How can we move towards a future that communes instead of divides— and also envision a politics of the Earth?

Borderization operates not only through physical fortifications, but also through computational strategies and algorithms. It acts within a media regime that hooks us on instants. It works through montages that sever the connections between presents, pasts, and futures, obscuring shared grounds. Each day, according to predicted preferences, we are offered curated sequences on our personal screens: celebrity recipes, images from art exhibitions, graphic depictions of violence, and cute animals. All appear together within the same temporal stream.

With our attention moving from one instant to the next, how do these flickers of varying degrees of urgency affect our sensibilities and contribute to the fragmentation of our minds and of the larger collective? As the perception of our realities disperses, we search for quick solutions and immediate answers becoming consumable identities that serve as the new raw material of the day.

In this context, how can we restore the memories that are being erased and re-hack the extraction of our minds in order to build futures that are not mere repetitions of dysfunctional pasts? How can we organize movements that foster cohesion rather than separation and that are grounded in an awareness of our planetary entanglements with other earthly communities?

The program asks which other nature intelligences —beyond the "us-and-them binary"— we might look to for clues on how to move toward more congruent realities in which all actors of life on Earth are recognised as valid agents.

Drawing on a wide spectrum of thinkers, artists, and theorists—and particularly Achille Mbembe’s concept of borderization and the notion of planetary entanglement— SOMA Summer 2026 will approach the planetary as a politics of life and a politics of Earth. During the program, we will explore contemporary media regimes, politics, and technologies. We will also engage in critical analyses of the various tools through which borderization operates, and examine how resistance and collaboration can take place at a moment when strategies of collectivity are being co-opted to generate division in service of control and financial growth.

Over the course of four weeks, the program, convened by Sara Eliassen (artist and filmmaker, Norway), Yoshua Okón (artist, Mexico) and Roselin Rodríguez Espinosa (curator and art historian, Cuba), bring together a group of artists and thinkers for collective and critical speculation on what planetary consciousness could look like at this historical juncture.

The program will serve as a hub for discursive and practical exchange, featuring seminars and conferences with Irmgard Emmelhainz (writer and independent researcher, Mexico), Lee Fang (journalist, USA) and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (sociologist and activist, Mexico), alongside online participations by Franco "Bifo" Berardi (philosopher and activist, Italy) and Achille Mbembe (historian, Cameroon). Workshops and artist talks will be led by Paloma Contreras (artist, Mexico), Fritzia Irizar (artist, Mexico), Metahaven (artist collective, Netherlands), Fernando Palma (artist, Mexico), and Naomi Rincón Gallardo (artist, Mexico). The program will also include group critiques, collective discussions, site visits, and weekly portfolio reviews with artists, curators, and thinkers from the local contemporary art scene.

The selected participant will receive support from OCA covering:

• Programme participation fee
• Return flights from Oslo to Mexico City
• Grant for living and accommodation: 30,000 NOK

Applicants must:

• Be a Norwegian or Norway-based professional artist, curator, critic or theorist
• Be able to participate in the full programme period
• Have sufficient English proficiency to participate in discussions and seminars
  

By applying for the programme, the applicant confirms that, to their knowledge, nothing could prevent them from obtaining the required visa for the period of their stay. It is the recipient's responsibility to ensure that the appropriate visa is granted if they are awarded support to attend the programme.

Any discontinuation of the visa due to such issues or visa-related issues will remain the resident's sole risk, responsibility, and cost.

The selection process takes place in two stages:

Stage 1 – OCA nomination
Applications will be reviewed by OCA. Based on merit and relevance to the programme, OCA will nominate three to five candidates.

Stage 2 – final selection by SOMA
The nominated candidates will be forwarded to SOMA, which will make the finalselection of one participant for the programme.

Applicants are asked to submit:

• A short motivation letter, max. one A4 page in Word or PDF format
  Your motivation letter should address the programme theme, for example:
  why are you interested in this year’s programme?
  how is your work related this year’s programme?
• Portfolio in PDF format or hyperlink
• CV in PDF format