AI – Threats and Promises – Artistic Positions on Post-Digital Futures – AG18 GALLERY Vienna, June 30 - August 26, 2026
Following its presentation at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, the exhibition has been revised and expanded for its Vienna edition.
Since late 2022, the rapid rise of generative AI systems has reshaped artistic, societal and political debates. Massive investments in data centres, new technological infrastructures and shifting global power dynamics mark this transformation. At the same time, questions of energy consumption, regulation, digital ethics and democratic oversight have become increasingly urgent.
Examples such as the virtual AI minister “Diella” in Albania or the admission of the non-binary AI system “Flynn” as a student at the University of Applied Arts Vienna demonstrate how deeply AI is already embedded in social and institutional structures. Terms such as deepfakes, neural networks and AI agents have become part part of everyday discourse — yet they often remain difficult to grasp.
This exhibition approaches AI from an artistic perspective. It understands art as a critical practice with a postautonomous stance and positions it as a framework, mirror and testing ground for examining technological change. Rather than treating AI merely as a tool, the exhibition explores it as a social, aesthetic and political phenomenon.
AI appears here as a cultural infrastructure: it reproduces norms and social biases, shapes narratives and imaginaries of the future, sets aesthetic standards and exerts systemic and material agency. Technology is not neutral; it actively participates in shaping perception and social reality.
The exhibition engages with the entanglements of humans and machines, bodies and data, authorship and delegation, fascination and power. A dedicated section addresses digital ethics, accompanied by lectures and discussions that deepen and extend the artistic positions presented here.
In this context, the exhibition invites visitors not only to observe technological change, but to reflect on their own position within the infrastructures of our digital culture that increasingly shape perception, decision-making and imagination. What forms of agency remain possible — and how might they be redefined?
Artists:
Die Aschenbrecher | Adamu-Umar Faruq | Alexander Föllenz | Begi Guggenheim | Olivier Hölzl | Lukas Lex | The Meaningful Noise Collective | Daniel Mazanik | Anna Pelz | Sebastian Pfeifhofer | Sebastian Pirch | Philipp Renda | Bettina Schülke | Annette Tesarek | Norbert Unfug | Ana Vollwesen | Moritz Wildburger | The Future Foundation & Aron Cserveny | poster artwork by Ana Vollwesen |
Academic Partners
The Future Foundation
The Future Foundation is an interdisciplinary forum of professionally distinguished and independent personalities thinking about and working on questions of technology in our digitised future. Its mission is to develop practical, orientation-providing guidelines for urgent and forward-looking questions concerning the good life in a digital world. The 10 Rules for the Digital World were developed by 11 university representatives from 13 different disciplines in 2025. https://www.thefuturefoundation.eu/en
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine at the University of Vienna
The institute employs several graduates of the University of Applied Arts Vienna and supports the exchange between art and science. Professor Dr. Jörg Menche will give a lecture on this topic as part of our exhibition. https://netmed.lbg.ac.at/
Opening: Tuesday, 30 June 2026, 6:00–10:00 pm Closing Event: Wednesday, 26 August 2026, 6:00–10:00 pm
A programme of lectures, discussions and artist talks will accompany the exhibition. Further details will be announced separately.
