More Future! Media Art Days NRW 2025
Friday, October 24, 2025 – 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 25, 2025 from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
In cooperation with: HMKV Hartwarte MedienKunstVerein, Academy for Theater and Digitality, UZWEI at the Dortmunder U
All events are free of charge.
In light of multiple crises, how can we still believe in the future today? The MedienKunstTage NRW 2025 explores this question with a program that brings together artistic imagination, technological criticism, and social visions. Under the title “More Future!”, the festival brings together positions that understand hope not as a naive attitude, but as a critical practice.
For over a century, technological progress has inspired utopias: networked societies, shared knowledge, free time, fairer opportunities. But the promises of automation, participation, and digital democracy seem to be increasingly evaporating. The belief that technology makes our lives better is being shaken—by political setbacks, ecological crises, and the concentration of power in the tech sector.
The MedienKunstTage 2025 counter this with an artistic and scientific search space: for new stories, rediscovered ideas, and other forms of coexistence. At the center is the thesis that we have lost the future—and that it is time to reclaim it.
In screenings, readings, performances, talks, and workshops, we ask:
More Visions. What dreams does art feed?
More Critique. How do technologies and their providers threaten the future?
More Hope. Where can we find new optimism?
More Endings. What must end so that something new can emerge?
More Art. What is currently happening in media art in North Rhine-Westphalia?
More Channels. How can we come together digitally in a different way?
More Connections. What should the cultural networks of the future look like?
More Sharing. How can we share knowledge sustainably?
More Future in the Sun! – We invite artists, scientists, and the public to join us in making the future (once again) conceivable.
With contributions from: Iuditha Balint, Sophie Emelie Beha, Jacob Birken, Elisabeth Brun, Nadja Buttendorf, Jamie-Lee Campbell, Dietmar Dath, Daniel Felstead & Jenn Leung, Theresa Hannig, Isabella Hermann, Laura Hille, Felix Hüttemann, Claude Jansen, Shuang Li, Gala Hernández López, Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Felix Maschewski, Lisa Panitz, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Laurence Rassel, rendered realities (Agnetha Jaunich & Hendrik Lange), Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss, Vanina Saracino, Julia Scherzl, Ani Schulze, Nishant Shah, Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Paula Maya Strunden, SOAP (Bettina Katja Lange & Uwe Brunner), Cornelia Sollfrank, Manuel Talarico, Maximilian Voigt, Nate Wessalowski, Ingo Wichmann
Program of MedienKunstTage 2025
| Friday, 24.10.2025 | Location | Saturday, 25.10.2025 | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11:15h Welcome and opening remarks | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 | 11.00 – 13.00h Workshop: Fake Futures – a minifesto making exercise | Akademie für Theater und Digitalität |
| 11.30 – 13.00h Live-Podcast: Behind the Screens, Behind the Scenes | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 | 14.00 – 15.30h Filmprogram: If the eye were not sunlike, the sun‘s light it would not see | Kino im U, Dortmunder U, Ebene 0 |
| 14.00 – 15.30h Filmprogram: If the eye were not sunlike, the sun‘s light it would not see | Kino im U, Dortmunder U, Ebene 0 | 14.00 – 15.30h Guided tour Genossin Sonne | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 |
| 16.00 – 19.00h Workshop: PlakaTopia: I’m so angry, I even made a sign. | uwzei, Dortmunder U, Ebene 2 | ||
| 16.15 – 18.00h Paneldiscussion: Unattainable presents, inevitable endings | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 | 16.00 – 17.00h Paneldiscussion: Commons of Today: Open source ideas for a livable future | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 |
| 19.00 – 20.00h Performance: POST CORPUS SHAPESHIFTER | uzwei, Dortmunder U, Ebene 2 | 18.00 – 19.00h Discussion panel: Commons of Tomorrow: open thinking, living, working together | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 |
| 20.30 – 22.00h Discussion panel: Future Fiction: Sci-Fi for a Better World | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 | 20.00 – 21.30h Reading and discussion: Skyrmions Or: A Fucking Army (with Dietmar Dath) | HMKV, Dortmunder U, Ebene 3 |
All events are free of charge.
The work of Büro medienwerk.nrw is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, on whose behalf it organizes coordination, professionalization, and consulting in the field of media art. Büro medienwerk.nrw is based at HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.