Alina Schmuch selected for the Sonic Acts x Rupert residency

Sonic Acts and Rupert are delighted to announce that Alina Schmuch has been selected for the ALTERLIFE residency!

Taking up photography and film, Alina Schmuch explores the intersection of visual media and reality through artists’ books and video installations. She studied Media Arts at HfG Karlsruhe and was a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Schmuch’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Akademie der Künste, and at the 15th Architecture Biennale with Forensic Architecture. She has received the Visual Arts Work Stipend from the Berlin Senate, the 27th Bremen Award for Video Art, and the MAK Schindler Scholarship. Currently, she is involved in Hydromedia, an artistic research programme focusing on water’s vital role in our lives and addressing environmental challenges.

Drawing on her research into bathrooms and sewage systems, Schmuch intends to develop a moving-image installation. In her series Bathroom Studies (2022 – ongoing), the bath is regarded as an interface where technology and the body meet and relationships between the public and the intimate, visibility and invisibility, are negotiated. Besides scenes of interiors, landscapes, and hydrological processes, she researches amphibian life forms – animals and plants that move between the boundaries of wet and dry, and which have always been associated with the otherworldly. Sonic Acts and Rupert would also like to congratulate the finalists (listed in no particular order): Inas Halabi, Zahra Malkani, Joey Holder, and belit sağ. The selection committee was delighted to receive approximately 500 applications to the open call and was exceedingly impressed by the high standard of submissions. A collaborative, two-part research and production residency, ALTERLIFE is hosted by Rupert in Vilnius, Lithuania (September–October 2024) and Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (February 2025) with W139. Photo credit: Daniel Sadrowski