For 2025, STATEMENT focuses on algorithmic control, digital disinformation, and technological manipulation. The exhibition, titled Realities Building, is curated by Marcella Beccaria, Chief Curator and Head of Collections at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin.

The exhibition brings together artists from across the globe—many of whom live in different parts of the world by choice or necessity—whose practices articulate the urgency of reclaiming agency in technologically saturated environments.

Centering on film, sound, and performance, Realities Building explores how artists working with time-based media provoke critical thought and create new frameworks for perceiving reality. The featured works address the entangled forces of surveillance and disinformation, while also offering alternative strategies of resistance and affirmations of individual freedom.

As part of the ongoing STATEMENT programme, two panel discussions will take place on Friday, 12 September 2025, exploring the themes of realities, information, and disinformation in the age of artificial intelligence and technological control.

STATEMENT: Realities Building, 13:00

This session features a conversation with Marcella Beccaria, curator of the format, alongside with Armando Lulaj (Artist & Filmmaker, Founder and Co-director of DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art). The discussion will focus on emerging forms of presence, resistance, and civic engagement in a world increasingly shaped by control and misinformation.

STATEMENT: Navigating Bias, Censorship, and the Crisis of Truth, 15:00

Experts including Clemens Apprich (Head of the Department of Media Theory and the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures, as well as Vice-Rector for Research & Digitality at the University of Applied Arts Vienna), Olga Yurkova (Co-Founder of StopFake.org), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (Cultural Manager, Curator, Author, and Artistic Director of ReGenerativa) and Irina Nalis (Scientist researching Digital Humanism at TU Wien, Curator at Elevate) will examine issues such as algorithmic governance, digital disinformation, and technological manipulation.

viennacontemporary
11–14 September 2025
Messe Wien, Halle D
Trabrennstraße 7
1020 Vienna

Featured image: Valerie Maltseva