Still Unstable – 45 Years of V2_
For 45 years, V2_ has been a space where artists, researchers and technologists come together to question, explore and experiment with emerging technologies. To mark this anniversary, V2_ presents Still Unstable: a programme of exhibitions, talks, interviews and live performances exploring the hidden systems that shape technological innovation today.

Rather than looking back, Still Unstable looks ahead. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, algorithms and digital infrastructures, the programme asks what remains unseen: the labour, resources, ecologies and power structures behind contemporary technologies, and how artistic practice can make these visible.

Exhibition
24 September – 18 October 2026

The exhibition brings together works by Rosa Menkman, Aram Bartholl, Anna Ehrenstein, knowbotiq, Kaisa Molga, Morehshin Allahyari and more to be announced. Through installations, moving image and artistic research, the participating artists examine the infrastructures, relationships and systems that underpin today’s technological landscape.

Unstable Talks & Interviews
24–26 September 2026

Alongside the exhibition, Still Unstable presents three days of talks, artist talks and interviews reflecting on 45 years of media art and the challenges of contemporary technological culture.

Confirmed speakers are Andreas Broeckmann, Annet Dekker, Aram Bartholl, Anna Ehrenstein & Yara Makawei, and Marijn Bril. Interviews feature Joost Rekveld, Joana Chicau, Gökay Atabekand Rosa Menkman.

We are made of memory, but memory itself is a fiction 

The exhibition Self Storage investigates how individuals construct identity through personal and intimate recollections, as well as through the technical and social systems that shape their traces. Memory is not an objective recording: it is an assemblage, a selective construction built from both forgetting and persistence. A memory emerges within a space shaped by desire, loss, and reconstruction. Self Storage foregrounds this subjective and unstable dimension of remembering. Diaries, family archives, obsolete technologies, and bodily reminiscences become raw materials to examine the materiality of memory and its capacity for reinvention.

Hard drives, clouds, online profi les, and social networks are gradually replacing notebooks and photo albums. This massive externalization questions the boundary between private memory and public exposure, between lived traces and standardized data. Self Storage extends this inquiry into a contemporary era where identity is stored, outsourced, and endlessly duplicated. Through the works assembled, the exhibition off ers a poetic and critical drift between real and invented memory, intimate and externalized. It prompts us to consider: What do we need to retain? What do we choose to forget? And what becomes of the “self” when it is reduced to archives, content, and imprints?

curation : Nicolas de Chérisey & Philippine de Salaberry in collaboration with Ellia gallery

participating artists:
Joël Andrianomearisoa, Maxime Antony, Marcella Barceló, Aram Bartholl, Federica Belli, Matthias Bitzer, Borgial, Victor Boyer, Amélie Caussade, Salomé Chatriot, Coucou Bébé, Nick Coutsier, Fleur Cozic, Paul Créange, Corentin Darré, Oli Epp, Léonor Fini, Nan Goldin, Gregor Hildebrandt, Ryoji Ikeda, Victoire Inchauspé, Éloïse Labarbe-Lafon, Octave Lauret, Louis Lekien, Inès Longevial, Keegan Luttrell, Shiva Lynn Burgos, Matisse Mesnil, Sabine Mirlesse, Polina Osipova, Louise des Places, Joséphine de Rohan-Chabot, Philippine de Salaberry, Tehotu, Egon Thuile, Thu-Van Tran, Louis Verret, Francesco Vezzoli, Rose Vidal, Xolo Cuintle, Kai Yoda, Yugnat999.

The Grand Snail Tour activates public spaces in the region through artistic formats of exchange, participation, and co-production – often in collaboration with local actors. Over the course of three years, it will travel through all 53 cities in the Ruhr region. The project addresses important questions of social coexistence in an experimental and innovative way: Who owns public space and how can we create places for communal activities or activate existing spaces? What role does art play in this? The Grand Snail Tour aims to leave a variety of impressions, offer shared experiences and invite people to join the journey.

AFTER MEMORY reflects on how memory is affected by endless social media feeds, clouded storage spaces, automated data storage, and networked communication technologies. This bears both challenges and chances, as practices of remembering and forgetting are reconfigured and their competences are transferred from institutional actors to civic initiatives and individuals. In turn, the role of museums and archives is redefined, too, whose collections no longer preside over a sovereign narration of the past, but constitute shared repositories for the future.

AFTER MEMORY is a project by: Nathalia Lavigne, Lisa Deml, Víctor Fancelli Capdevila

For its new exhibition, the Avant Galerie Vossen brings together some twenty artists around the theme of the Rectangle. With this exhibition, the gallery continues to forge links between traditional practices and digital forms. *Black Rectangle* brings together painting, sculpture, installation, and new technologies.

A legendary motif
In the Lascaux caves, beneath the deer and bison we’ve known since childhood, researcher Stanislas Dehaene uncovered something unexpected: a black rectangle beneath the painting of the deer. The first geometric shape drawn by humankind. A minimal yet decisive sign—the beginning of symbolic thought, according to the researcher; this ability to create symbols is what makes us human; we are symbolic beings. Several millennia later, the black rectangle is still there, more than ever. It has multiplied; it covers our phone screens and our digital interfaces. The black rectangle censors, protects, hides. It is the form of imposed silence as much as it is of minimalist art. It is the browser window and the redaction bar. And it covers the walls of the Avant Galerie Vossen.

The black rectangle—poetic, humorous, political, algorithmic…
In the exhibition, the black rectangle takes on a poetic form for painters and sculptors. It is a humorous form for Apolline Régent when she plays with the legacy of the painter Malevich. It is a political form when Enora Denis finds it in facial recognition patents, masking the faces that feed the algorithms. It is an algorithmic form when Olivain Porry programs an AI to lie to other AIs and other humans. It is a physical form, rooted in the street, when Aram Bartholl seals a USB drive into the wall on Rue Chapon. It is fabric and sound when Cécile Babiole weaves electrical cables as one would weave wool.

In collaboration with Galerie Placido, 41 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris

With:

Clarisse AÏN, Jean-Michel ALBEROLA, Cécile BABIOLE, Robbie BARRAT, Ronan BARROT, Aram BARTHOLL, Louise BELIN, Ross BLECKNER, Benoit de BRETTES, CÉSAR, Mattia CUTTINI, Judith DEGOULET, Enora DENIS, David GUEZ, Grégoire HESPEL, Denis LAGET, Takesada MATSUTANI, Albertine MEUNIER, Hélène MILAKIS, PIERRE EDOUARD, Piero PIZZI CANNELLA, Olivain PORRY, Michel POTAGE, Apolline RÉGENT, Park SEO-BO, James SIENA, u2p050, Bernar VENET

SPEED SHOW is back! We are very pleased to present a super diverse field of artists from net.art of the 1st generation to current web and screen based practice turning away from the platforms and smartphones to make work for the computer screen again. Back in the days monitors were heavy and computers weren’t mobile. Internet cafes were social spaces to meet and to be on the internet together. Over the years screens became smaller and flatter. Today we spend most of our time isolated on the black rectangle of a smartphone screen but a general fatigue of social media filled with clickbait-aislop has been making its way in the last few years. A young generation of digital artists is again producing exciting works for the computer screen, with pixels, HTML, as games, interaction and with a deep understanding of the web as the true social space. CU you at the cyber cafe!

Curated by: Aram Bartholl, Hugo Du Plessix & Emilie Blanchard / L’Avant Galerie Vossen

with: Cécile Babiole, Raphael Bastide, Nadja Buttendorf, Shu Lea Cheang, Vuk Ćosić, Insa Derk Wagner, Nathan Ghali, David Guez, Leander Herzog, Dasha Ilina, Jonas Lund, Stella Jacob, Cassie Mc Quater, Albertine Meunier, Vincent Moulinet, Rhea Myers, Nephilia, Eleonore Sense & Reem Saleh, Nicolas Sassoon, Antoine Schmitt, Florie Souday, Zero Crossing Point

May 28th 7:30-10:00pm, MILK cyber cafe, 31 BD SÉBASTOPOL, PARIS 1ER
Same night! ✨@avant.galerie opening „Rectangle noir“ group show! 6:00-9:00pm 58 rue chapon, 75003

From the exhibition flyer: ‚In our country, we are witnessing a strengthening AfD as a rallying party of the far-right and right-wing conservative spectrum. This year, significant events are taking place. On July 4th, the party intends to hold a federal party conference in Erfurt, the state capital of Thuringia — the very place where, exactly 100 years earlier, an NSDAP party conference was held. The NSDAP Reich Party Congress of 1926 is regarded as a turning point of the völkisch movement. At the time, the Nazis made a demonstrative march into the German National Theatre in Weimar…‘

curated by Dirk Teschner und MIEZE SÜDLICH

Artists: Stefan Alber, Aram Bartholl, Benedikt Braun, Mirjam Dorsch, Thomas Draschan, Tony Franz, Tino Helbig, kanaluntersuchung (Frank Maibier / Andreas Winkler), Tonia Karn, Wilhelm Maria Elfriede Leithold, Dirk Leitloff, Eric Meier, MINETTA, Caterina Mitwalsky, Anne Mundo / Peter Wawerzinek, Ulrike Mundt, Alexander Neugebauer, Tommy Neuwirth, Thomas Prochnow, Christian Rothe, Hanna Schiller, Berni Bernchen feat Moritz Schleime, Marco Schmitt, Michal Schmidt, Bettina Scholz, Elisabeth Sonneck, Moritz Stumm, Ronny Szillo, Raul Walch, Ina Wudtke

Am 31. März findet im LUX Pavillon der Hochschule Mainz die ganztägige, vierte Ausgabe der readOn Konferenz unter dem Titel AT THE EDGE OF KNOWING statt.

Die Konferenz richtet den Blick auf jene Momente, in denen Wissen brüchig wird – wenn sich zwischen Gewissheit und Vermutung, Erkenntnis und Ahnung ein offener Raum auftut. Ein Raum, der sich eindeutigen Definitionen entzieht: Fragen werden wichtiger als Antworten, Prozesse bedeutsamer als Ergebnisse – und Unsicherheit erscheint nicht als Mangel, sondern als produktive Kraft.

AT THE EDGE OF KNOWING lädt dazu ein, diese Schwelle des Verstehens bewusst zu betreten. Gemeinsam suchen wir nach neuen Perspektiven auf Gestaltung, Begegnung und das Denken möglicher Zukünfte. Nicht-Wissen wird dabei nicht umgangen, sondern als Ausgangspunkt ernst genommen.

In Vorträgen und Diskussionen untersuchen geladene Gäste, welche Rolle Unsicherheit in gestalterischen Prozessen, in der Forschung und in unserer Haltung zur Zukunft spielen kann. Die Konferenz versteht sich nicht als abgeschlossener Zustand, sondern als Reflexion eines Prozesses, der sich in die Ungewissheit hinein entfaltet – und lädt dazu ein, gemeinsam an den Rand des Wissens zu treten und die Weite des Unscharfen zu erkunden. In ungewissen Zeiten möchten wir Raum schaffen, um zusammenzukommen – und statt am scheinbar Sicheren festzuhalten, bewusst loszulassen und neu zu denken. Die Teilnahme ist gegen eine freiwillige Spende möglich.

Organisiert von den Studierenden des Masterstudiengangs Kommunikationsdesign der Hochschule Mainz.

Well informed. Badly disposed.
Doomscrolling, Negativbias und die sozialen Herausforderungen

Ort EIGENHEIM Weimar, Asbachstraße 1, 99423 Weimar / Eröffnung 14.03.2026 um 19 Uhr mit dem DJ Set Druck – Resonanz – Kontrollverlust von Christoph Höfferl / Dauer 15.03.2025 – 25.04.2026

beteiligte Künstler*innen: Anna Bittersohl, Aram Bartholl, Simon Baumgart, Jonas Blume, Benedikt Braun, Elisa Jule Braun, Paolo Cirio, Ben Grosser, Esra Gülmen, Susanne Junker, Philipp Kummer, Marc Lee, Kayla Mattes, Signe Pierce, Theresa Rothe, Michal Schmidt, Stefan Schiek

Der Auftakt des Jahresprogramms, das sich Zuversicht, Positivität und kollektiver Lebensfreude widmet, wird durch die Ausstellung „Well informed. Badly disposed.“ markiert. Zugleich versteht sich diese erste Ausstellung als bewusste Problemanalyse: Sie benennt die Bedingungen, unter denen ein positives Jahresthema heute nicht naiv, sondern notwendig erscheint – als Haltung, um zunehmender Polarisierung, Emotionalisierung und politischer Vereinnahmung von Information etwas entgegenzusetzen.

Im Zentrum stehen die Mechanismen von Doomscrolling und Negativbias – Phänomene, die unsere Wahrnehmung, unsere Stimmung und zunehmend auch den gesellschaftlichen Diskurs prägen. Eine immersive, düster-dystopische Ausstellungskulisse definiert einen bewusst abstoßenden Raum und schafft einen von Reizüberflutung geprägten Erfahrungsrahmen, der Angst, Erschöpfung, Ekel und Abgründigkeit vermittelt. Die Ausstellung macht jene emotionale Überforderung erfahrbar, die aus der permanenten Konfrontation mit negativen Nachrichten entsteht.

Künstlerische Positionen untersuchen, wie digitale Informationsflüsse, soziale Medien und algorithmische Logiken unser Denken und Fühlen beeinflussen. Dabei wird deutlich: Plattformen sind nicht neutral. Sie spiegeln ökonomische und politische Machtverhältnisse wider, verstärken Polarisierungen und prägen demokratische Öffentlichkeiten weltweit. Zugleich zeigt sich, dass individuelle Mediennutzung eng mit Fragen von Verantwortung, Vertrauen und Bildung verknüpft ist. Die Ausstellung macht sichtbar, wie stark wir dazu neigen, das Negative stärker zu gewichten als das Positive – und wie soziale Medien und Informationsplattformen diesen Bias gezielt nutzen, um Aufmerksamkeit zu maximieren.

„Well informed. Badly disposed.“ beleuchtet bewusst die negativen Einflüsse unserer medialen Umwelt und macht zugleich neugierig auf die weiteren Ausstellungen des Jahresthemas. Sie eröffnet den notwendigen Kontrast, um die Kraft der Zuversicht in den folgenden Projekten umso stärker erfahrbar werden zu lassen. So bildet diese erste Ausstellung den kritischen Auftakt für ein Programm, das Schritt für Schritt Perspektiven auf Optimismus, Empathie und kollektive Freude entfaltet.

By occupying nearly a third of our waking hours, screens are profoundly reshaping the contours of our relationships with others. In response, numerous journalistic and academic discourses echo concerns about the digital migration of our social lives: the idea frequently arises that the socio-technical systems at work in this migration are making us more resistant to diversity.

Our intention is to nuance this concern by acknowledging a foundational aspect of the internet—its original design to facilitate the virtuous and unprecedented emergence of communities of specific interests, often far more specialized than what our traditional offline social circles can accommodate. This utopia inevitably carries a tension between, on the one hand, the benefits of more efficient and far-reaching sociability, and on the other, the widely discussed risks of a social life limited to alters who are most similar to ourselves.

Curated by Aurélie Clémente-Ruiz, director of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and Camille Roth, a researcher at CNRS in social sciences.

With: Nicolas Bailleul, Aram Bartholl, Léa Belloousovitch, Neïl Beloufa, Sophie Calle, Paola Ciarska, Laurent Grasso, Juliette Green, Ben Grosser, Özgür Kar, Béatrice Lartigue, Lauren Lee MacCarthy, Katherine Longly, Randa Maroufi, Magalie Mobetie, Martine Neddam, Philippe Parreno, Françoise Pétrovitch, Valentina Peri, Marilou Poncin, Jeanne Suspuglas

Bilder

🤳🏾Bring Your Phone! : TOUCH FARM 🌾👩‍🌾 reclaims the idea of the farm for the screen age. If farming once organized land, labor, and life, today it organizes attention and clout. TOUCH FARM takes the architecture of click farms and flips it from extraction to participation.

Bring your phone. Exhibit your work. Everyone participates.
🐷🐐🐰🐖🐴🐑🐓🐖🐔🐮🐇🌾🚜👩‍🌾
Curated by @arambartholl & @socratesstamatatos.

🎉 #Vorspiel 2026 Opening Party at @panke.gallery

📍panke.gallery, Friday, 16 January 2026 at 7 PM (Gerichtstr. 23, Hof 5, 13347 Berlin)

A look at how our online practices leave a trace and shape our rights. Drawing on the Charter of Digital Rights (2021), the exhibition explores seven key areas with humour and everyday examples. Framed within the Observatory of Digital Rights and curated by Fundación Telefónica and Domestic Data Streamers, the show encourages reflection and debate around the safe, responsible, critical, and creative use of technology.

We accept cookies as if they were freshly baked biscuits, without having the slightest idea of what ingredients they contain. We share photos of our children’s birthdays or family trips as if they were WhatsApp stickers, without knowing where they might end up. We use the same password for our bank account and our grocery app (spoiler: not a good idea). We check a website to see if it’s going to rain, only to give away our data like candy on Halloween.

The exhibition Today Is a Good Day to Discuss Digital Rights seeks to raise awareness about the rights and duties that citizens exercise and develop in the digital sphere. Moreover, the show invites us to keep debating and building a system of guarantees around the digital ecosystem — a kind of ethical guide that helps us understand what digital rights and duties are, what they imply, and the opportunities the technological environment offers citizens.

Framed within the initiative of the Observatory of Digital Rights and curated by Fundación Telefónicatogether with the artistic collective Domestic Data Streamers — which presents six installations —, the exhibition features works by contemporary artists such as United Visual Artists, Eva & Franco Mattes, Paolo Cirio, Noemí Iglesias Barrios, Theresa Reiwer, Hasan Elahi, and Aram Bartholl, among others. Their works challenge visitors, help them understand, and encourage reflection on our actions as digital beings. A much-needed exhibition, it fuels the debate around digital rights and duties, and calls for a safe, responsible, critical, and creative use of technology. Because today is a good day to discuss Digital Rights.

GOGBOT 2025
SCROLL PANIC REPEAT
18-21 september @ ENSCHEDE
festival for art music technology

Join us live-in-studio with season two of the Radio Spaetkauf x Europäische Akademie Berlin podcast collaboration. This year we focus on CULTURE. Each episode features fresh voices and perspectives representing a wide array of backgrounds, expertise and disciplines. Host Daniel Stern is joined by researchers, academics, independent artists, journalists and community leaders with unique insights into our evolving cultural interactions.

September 13th: Museums are more than just buildings that house objects. They are sites of memory, meaning, and power – spaces where stories are told, preserved, and sometimes contested. But who decides what’s worth keeping? And how do museums evolve in response to the cultures and technologies of their time?

As boundaries blur between archive and activism, exhibition and experience, we ask: What is a museum today? And what should it be? Together we explore the shifting roles of museums in shaping public understanding, identity, and imagination.

Guests include:

Michael Soltau – Synthesizer Museum Berlin
Aram Bartholl – Media and concept artist
Lilja-Ruben Vowe – PhD in cultural history, curator and inclusive mediator
Dr. Wenke Wegner – Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation

Host: Dan Stern

The festival brings artistic short films into public space – presented in a mobile, seemingly improvised exhibition object: a transport cart with pneumatic tires, stacked with various boxes, crates and bags, all secured with colorful tension straps. Through peepholes in these containers, passersby can watch the films on hidden tablets or smartphones. The route leads through five locations in the district (Goslaer Platz, Mierendorffplatz, Österreichpark, Schustehruspark, Lietzenseepark). At each stop, the “mini-museum” stays for about one hour. The project is accompanied throughout the day by the two artists and curators Marian Luft and Moritz Frei, who will be present to assist and engage with the audience.

Curated by Marian Luft & Moritz Frei

With:
Iván Argote, Sophia Süßmilch, Björn Melhus, Hansol Kim, Barış Çavuşoğlu, Lorna Mills, Andrew Birk, Peng Li

Bilder