S+T+ARTS at Ars Electronica 2025

From September 3–7, 2025, S+T+ARTS will take part in Ars Electronica Festival 2025 themed PANIC: Yes/No?. This year’s edition explores how collective fears — from climate collapse to authoritarian technologies — can be transformed into engines for imagination, resilience, and democratic futures.

At the heart of this dialogue, S+T+ARTS showcases projects that critically question the infrastructures shaping our world. What are the societal implications of AI? Who builds these systems, and for whose benefit? These questions take centre stage in both the S+T+ARTS Prize Exhibition and the conference From AI War Clouds to Dual Futures: Democratic Responses to Authoritarian Tech.

September 3–7 2025,
Linz, Austria.

S+T+ARTS Prize Exhibition

Navigating Uncertainty

We live in a time of profound instability: ecological limits are being crossed, political systems are unsettled, and technologies evolve faster than we can grasp their impact. Uncertainty is not just a lack of clarity — it is built into the very systems we inhabit.

‘Navigating Uncertainty’ brings together artistic and research-based practices that question these systems and propose new ways of perceiving and navigating the unknown. The exhibition unfolds across three chapters — Climate Uncertainty, Techno-Social Uncertainty, and Fundamental Uncertainty — and highlights how even emerging fields such as quantum technologies challenge our frameworks of reality. Rather than offering fixed answers, these works act as tools: to see more clearly, feel more deeply, and imagine more expansively in the face of the unknown.

The exhibition features the selection of the STARTS Prize and STARTS Prize Africa winners, funded by the Horizon Europe Programme of the European Union and DG CNECT in the framework of the STARTS Ec(h)o and STARTS Afropean Intelligence projects: AI War Cloud Database, Sarah Ciston (US) + Coexist, Emergence Delft (NL) + Computational Compost, Marina Otero Verzier (ES) + Large Language Writer, Lucy Li (AT), Leo Mühlfeld (AT), Alan Schiegl (AT) + Sands of Time, Ala Praxis (NG) + Sensing Quantum, LAS Art Foundation (DE) + Synthetic Memories, Domestic Data Streamers (ES) + The Wild Future Lab, Kairos Futura (KE)

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S+T+ARTS Conference Day

From AI War Clouds to Dual Futures: Democratic Responses to Authoritarian Tech

Inspired by the STARTS Prize 2025 winners—AI War Cloud Database by Sarah Ciston and Sensing Quantum by LAS Art Foundation—this forum invites artists, scientists, policy-makers, critical technologists, and cultural workers to ask:

+ Who builds the infrastructure and the technological stack we live inside?
+ What systems of power and what politics does it serve?
+ And how can we reclaim its layers—material, cognitive, planetary—as sites of collective agency?

In response to today’s urgent ecological and digital transitions, it offers a space for collective imagination, experimentation, and collaboration. The conference is a collaboration between Archipelago of Possible Futures, STARTS Prize 2025, EIT Culture & Creativity, E-DIH AI5Production and Ars Electronica.

Sept. 4, POSTCITY — Floor 1, Conference Hall.

11:00–13:15 | Welcome & Opening Remarks

Francesca Bria (IT/DE), José Luis de Vincente (ES), Gerfried Stocker (AT)

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11:30–13:15 | AI War Cloud: Dual-Use Systems and the New Architecture of Power

Keynote speaker: Sarah Ciston — Artist and researcher | Participants: Klaus Uhrig — Producer, Peter Thiel Podcast + Simone Ruf — Lawyer and case coordinator, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte + Julia Kloiber — Co-Founder and Managing Director, superrr Lab + Kambale Musavuli — Technologist and political analyst, Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa

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13:30–15:30 | Dual-Use / Dual Futures: Reclaiming the Stack for Europe’s Commons

Keynote speaker: Trevor Paglen — Artist and author | Participants: Marina Otero Verzier — Architect and curator Domestic Data Streamers — Civic designers + Leo Muhlefeld — Writer and performer, Large Language Writer + Paul Keller — Director, Open Futures + dmstfctn – Artist duo, The Models: AI-driven interactive theatre powered by Bologna’s HPC

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15:45–17:00 | Entangled Futures: Quantum Poetics and the Deep Imagination

Keynote speaker: Armin Linke — Artist and photographer, author of the book ‘Quantum Conditions’ | Participants: Bettina Kames — Director, LAS Art Foundation (Sensing Quantum) + Fernando Cucchietti, Data pre and Post processing Group Manager, Barcelona Supercomputing Center + Giulia Bini — Curator and Head of Arts, CERN + Robert Meisner — Earth Observation Programmes Outreach and Experience coordinator, ESA + Emma Sanders — Project Manager, Emergence Delft

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