Exhibition: UN_CTRL

What kind of technologies do we need, and how might we shape them to serve our collective interests? How can we move beyond technological systems driven by corporate power, extraction and constant optimization towards forms of technology that enable autonomy, solidarity and convivial ways of living together?

The UN_CTRL exhibition explores these questions through artistic and collaborative practices that challenge dominant understandings of technology and propose alternative ways of organizing social, economic, and ecological relationships. The exhibition emerges out of a three-day festival from 12^th to 14^th of November that brings together artists, researchers, and practitioners in a program of workshops, talks, and performances. Carrying the experimental nature of the festival onwards, the UN_CTRL exhibition considers technologies not simply as advanced technical systems, but as a much broader set of situated tools, infrastructures, knowledge systems and social practices that shape how we live, work, and relate to each other. 

Some of the works in the exhibition approach the growing influence of artificial intelligence on distribution of power, surveillance, labor and the systems of classification and prediction through critical forms of engagement with technology. For example, rawlab.xyz’s Ground Truth proposes performative camouflage techniques for escaping computer-vision tracking.  Nina Davies’s Precursing reads TikTok’s NPC dance trends as an unconscious plea to escape a present determined by predictive technologies. Akademie Schloss Solitude presents six projects resulting of the Web Residencies No. 22, Ignore All Previous Instructions, responding to the power of AI systems, search engines and digital platforms with defense, humor and care. Extending these questions into a broader historical perspective, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s Calculating Empires traces how technology and society developed together over five centuries, revealing the continuities of colonialism, militarization, automation and enclosure.

Alongside these critical perspectives, the exhibition brings forward practices that experiment with other forms of technological imagination and social organization. Next to others, Caroline Sinders’ The Potato Internet proposes a small-scale, experimental social network powered by a Raspberry Pi mesh network and potatoes, built for a local context and moderated according to feminist values and protocols. Juan Pablo García Sossa’s & Futura Trōpica Netroots’ hammock installation Re·figuring Hanging·Structures  plays on the Brazilian Portuguese word rede, meaning both network and hammock, and explores “net·resting” as an alternative to networking.

Other works shift the focus towards ecological relationships and forms of knowledge that extend beyond the human. In Fungal Frequencies, SurrealLabor makes the electrical activity of living fungal mycelia perceptible. Kathrin Böhm’s and Company Drinks’ Gemeine Getränke engages with the local ZKM orchard meadow and translates its diverse economies into the drink Eistee Randgut. The sound work Tele-transtopia by David Muñoz-Alcántara and collaborators evokes collective self-organization and solidarity in struggles to defend land, water, and communities.

Together, these works suggest that technologies are never neutral and its structures are not inevitable. They can be questioned, repurposed and collectively reshaped. Rather than offering a single technological solution to global problems, UN_CTRL advocates a plurality of approaches rooted in local knowledge, ecological awareness, shared resources and mutual care.