»Zwangsarbeit/en – Work Force/d« Residencies

The project and fellowship »Zwangsarbeit/en – Work Force/d« places sites of National Socialist forced labor in Stuttgart at the center of an artistic exploration. Between 1939 and 1945, tens of thousands of people from across Europe were deployed as forced laborers in Stuttgart – in industry, construction, agriculture, public institutions, and private households, often under inhumane conditions. The sites of this forced labor were part of everyday urban life. Many still exist today, yet are hardly recognizable as places of violence, exploitation, and disenfranchisement.

Within the framework of the residencies, these sites are to be made legible again through artistic interventions and mediation formats – not as closed historical settings, but as spaces within today’s urban landscape that are newly questioned and collectively negotiated. What stories, traces, and ruptures are inscribed in them? How do the experiences of forced labor continue to resonate in biographies, family memories, and social structures to this day? And how can connections be drawn from these historical sites to contemporary forms of coerced, dependent, or precarious labor – without simplistic equivalences, but with critical attentiveness to continuities and shifts?

Memory culture is understood here as an open, dialogical process that unfolds only through the encounter of artistic practice, historical research, and urban society in public space. The artistic works and accompanying mediation formats are intended to open up spaces in which diverse experiences, memories, and perspectives come together – and in which the history of forced labor can intersect anew with present-day questions of work, migration, exploitation, and responsibility, including within a global context.

Who can apply?

The call is open to national and international artists who are willing to engage artistically with specific historical sites of forced labor in Stuttgart and to develop new forms of remembrance culture. The sites should be located within the city of Stuttgart. Research will be supported by the Coordination Office for Remembrance Culture. A list of possible sites can be found here:
https://www.zwangsarbeit-in-stuttgart.de/ns-zwangsarbeit-in-stuttgart/ns-zwangsarbeit/orte-der-ns-zwangsarbeit-karte

The fellowship is awarded with no age restrictions.
Applications from collectives are unfortunately not possible.
Artists based in the Stuttgart area are encouraged to apply.

Mediation

Mediation and accessibility are central to the project. In addition to producing a site-specific artistic work, the fellowship requires at least two accompanying public events during the residency, designed to address different target groups and to test a variety of participatory formats. The public mediation program will be realized in cooperation with the House of History Stuttgart, the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Civic Education, and the Stuttgart Working Group on Forced Labor. The immediate neighborhoods of the sites of remembrance are also to be actively involved, encouraging them to understand themselves as part of a living practice of remembrance.

The fellowship includes:

  • a six-month stay in Stuttgart, optionally divided into two periods
  • project funding of €5,000 per fellowship (for research and production)
  • coverage of health insurance costs for non-EU citizens
  • exchange with an international, multidisciplinary community of fellows
  • participation in events organized by the Academy
  • support with local and regional networking
  • access to the workshops (wood, metal, video editing/VR) and libraries of Akademie Schloss Solitude

The fellowship is structured in two phases:

1. Research phase (three-month stay at Akademie Schloss Solitude): an intensive engagement with the site, its context, and the relevant themes.
2. Implementation and presentation phase (three-month stay at Akademie Schloss Solitude): development and realization of the artistic project and the public mediation program in collaboration with partner organizations.

There is the option to divide the stay into two phases within the period from June 2026 to July 2027.

The artists are accompanied and supported by the cooperation partners and a project lead.

Application process

The application should include the following materials (combined into a single PDF, maximum size 10 MB):

  • An artistic concept that examines, activates, and (re)makes visible at least one specific site of forced labor in Stuttgart’s public space. The artistic formats may be permanent, temporary, performative, or participatory. What is essential is the connection to the site and its present-day social environment. (Maximum 3 pages)
  • Artistic portfolio, optionally including links (maximum 10 pages)
  • Curriculum vitae

Please submit your application by March 16, 2026, at 12 p.m. (CET) via the following link:
https://my.hidrive.com/upl/bICtJQWLc.

For content-related inquiries, please contact Franziska Weber, Head of the Coordination Office for Remembrance Culture at the Stuttgart Office of Cultural Affairs, at Franziska.Weber@stuttgart.de.

For general questions regarding the call and the project, please contact Diana Yasmin Haddad, Project and Events Officer at Akademie Schloss Solitude, at d.haddad@akademie-solitude.de.

Background information on the Call

The National Socialist regime established one of the largest and most brutal systems of forced labor. Between 1939 and 1945, approximately 26 million people from the German Reich and the occupied territories were forced to work. Those affected were often disenfranchised people from Poland, the Soviet Union, France, and other occupied countries; they labored under inhumane conditions on construction sites, in factories, mines, agriculture, and in labor and concentration camps. Forced labor also permeated private spheres such as households, church communities, and schools. Paradoxically, this forced labor enabled the war production that simultaneously aimed at the destruction of the forced laborers’ home countries.

For a long time, the history of forced labor remained a suppressed chapter of European history. It was only in the context of compensation debates in the late 1990s that it increasingly came into focus and opened up broader public discourse. The traces of National Socialist forced labor are still palpable today: in biographies, in European cultures of remembrance, and in postwar political cooperation.

The case of Stuttgart reveals an ambivalent legacy. While the regional economy benefited, awareness of this chapter remains insufficiently anchored in the city’s collective memory and public space. Contemporary art can intervene at this point of absence by engaging with the history of forced labor in Stuttgart through the inclusion of international perspectives—particularly by telling individual stories and addressing concrete sites such as former camps, schools, and residential neighborhoods.

»Zwangsarbeit/en – Work Force/d« is a project by Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Coordination Office for Remembrance Culture of the City of Stuttgart, in cooperation with the House of History Stuttgart, the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Civic Education, and the Stuttgart Working Group on Forced Labor.