Merseburg University of Applied Sciences has awarded HGB alumnus Emerson Culurgioni the "Energy" artistic research fellowship for his interdisciplinary research into digital change. Following an open application process with over 90 submissions from Germany and abroad, a jury of experts selected him as the first scholarship holder. The scholarship started in January 2026 and runs for twelve months.
Emerson Culurgioni studied media art at the HGB Leipzig from 2010, initially in the Intermedia class with Prof. Alba D'Urbano, later in the expanded cinema class with Prof. Clemens von Wedemeyer, with whom Culurgioni also completed his diploma in 2013 and his master's degree in 2018. His final project HABITAT was honoured with the G2 Kunsthalle Master Student Award in 2018. He has been working as a co-author in various constellations for many years. He is also a co-founder of the Film Initiative Leipzig (FILZ). His work has been shown at international film festivals and in numerous exhibitions. In his filmic practice, Culurgioni deals with industrial, infrastructural and energy landscapes as well as with questions of materiality, labour and the social consequences of technical systems. His works move away from pure image production and shift the perspective towards the material, ecological and energetic conditions of the visible. They combine documentary methods with essayistic, installative and experimental formats.
The "Energy" artistic research grant, awarded for the first time by Merseburg University of Applied Sciences, is an invitation to engage in artistic research into the role of energy in society, technology, everyday life and culture. It is based on the research focus of Prof. Katja Müller's Heisenberg Professorship, with a focus on the interdisciplinary connection between technology, infrastructure, ethics and society, and is affiliated with the interdisciplinary junior research group "Energy - Digital & Decentralised". This group analyses the processes and effects of digitalisation and decentralisation in the energy sector with a focus on electricity generation and electricity management. The starting point of the work is the increasing use of decentralised power generation and storage units as part of the move away from fossil forms of energy supply and production.
As part of the scholarship, Culurgioni is focussing on the coupling of energy networks and AI-supported image production. With this award, Merseburg University of Applied Sciences is honouring an artistic practice that combines technological, ecological and social issues, while at the same time underlining the lasting impact of the HGB's artistic education far beyond Leipzig.