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“The Geopolitics of Infrastructure” probes the aesthetics and power relations of transnational systems at Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA). Curated by Nav Haq, it features Tekla Aslanishvili, Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Jonas Staal, Zheng Mahler and 10 others exploring infrastructure “as both facilitator and destroyer.” Assem Hendawi’s film Everything Under Heaven (2021), for example, traces Egypt’s post-1952 infrastructural ambitions as national cosmology and contested sovereignty.
“The fee I originally received for the Windows 95 chime will now go toward helping the victims of the attacks on Gaza. If a sound can signal real change then let it be this one.”
“It’s America’s most iconic company and it’s China’s bargaining chip. Beijing clearly has more of a hold on Apple’s day-to-day operations than Washington does.”
“Eventually, the cost of intelligence—the cost of AI—will converge with the cost of energy, and that will be how much you can have. The abundance of AI will be limited by the abundance of energy.”
Forensic Architecture details their work with Visualizing Abolition and Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in World Records. Revealing the story of a 2024 UC Santa Cruz exhibition—planned before the October 7 attack on Israel—the discussants talk through the challenges of updating an exhibition about the emergency in Gaza in real-time, the efficacy of Forensic Architecture investigations, and the ethics of representing Palestinian “testimony” during ongoing genocide.
“No” rebuts authoritarianism at Berlin’s Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien with defiance from Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Pilvi Takala, SUPERFLEX, and 10 other artists. Curated by exiled media platform Meduza, it tackles themes including censorship, dictatorship, and hope. Capturing the horror of war, Sergei Prokofiev’s Hell series transforms destroyed Ukrainian landmarks—Donetsk Airport and Mariupol Theater—into fragile 3D pen memorials of Russian devastation (2023-, image).
“Israel listened to Mr. Biari’s calls and tested the AI audio tool, which gave an approximate location for where he was making his calls. Using that information, Israel ordered airstrikes to target the area on Oct. 31, 2023, killing Mr. Biari. More than 125 civilians also died in the attack.”
“The irony is that the situation in the US has started to mirror the political situation in Iraq. There are interesting comparisons to be made between Trump and Saddam Hussein. I’ve seen a regime like this before.”
Swiss designer and engineer Samim Winiger launches Polycrisis Guide, an AI-powered systemic risk tracker to help us navigate the next decade. Developed as part of client work in financial risk management, Samim deploys advanced AI agents to provide comprehensive assessments across compounding risk factors including climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and geopolitical tensions. As it stands, there’s a 85% to 90% chance of collapse by 2032.
“Planetary thinking should be oriented toward the future with a new conceptual framework. The obstacle is that today, we still think primarily from the perspective of the nation-state and its economic and military interests.”
“If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians, I would not have joined Microsoft and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights.”
Data researcher Danielle Harlow launches the United States Disappeared Tracker, a Tableau dashboard for vizualizing people the Trump Administration deported, detained or renditioned for political reasons. “I can no longer be silent or ‘professional’,” Harlow writes on LinkedIn. “I have so few skills to fight the cancer of fascism that is spreading through the country but [I am] a ‘data person.’” Harlow sources information—names, country of origin etc—from media articles and invites others to join the cause.
Representation of war or model? Steven Cottingham’s solo exhibition “Lines Drawn in Sand Become a Valley” at Dazibao, Montréal, presents four video works that question the use of war games and military simulations. In As far as the drone can see (2023) and Magic Circles Ringed in Barbed Wire (2024), for example, the Canadian filmmaker infiltrates Arma 3, a tactical shooter widely used by law-enforcement, military contractors, and gamers alike, replacing virtual billboards with, for example, archival photos of real war refugees.
The first major survey of the Iraqi artist’s work, “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” opens at MCA Chicago. Presented are documentation of Domestic Tension (2007) and 3rdi (2010-11), performances juxtaposing the “comfort zone” (America) and the “conflict zone” (Iraq) during the Occupation of Iraq. Two new works are also featured, including a sculpture related to In a Grain of Wheat (2025, image left), in which Bilal archived the 3,000-year-old form of the Winged Bull of Nineveh in the DNA of Iraqi wheat seeds.
Calling attention to the fading “collective memory” of World War II, panGenerator’s media sculpture Erosion (2024) confronts visitors to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate with telling survey data. The piece, a fractured object covered in custom alphanumeric display units, draws on research conducted on behalf of the Pilecki Institute (that also commissioned the installation), highlighting “the mutability of historical knowledge and the seemingly inevitable process of forgetting.”
The investigative researchers of Bellingcat announce Shadow Finder Tool, a simple way of geolocating photographs using the position of Earth’s subsolar point—where the Sun is directly overhead—to narrow down search to a handful of countries and locations. “If you know the date and time an image was taken, and can make accurate measurements of the height of an object and the length of its shadow, you can identify the ring of possible areas where the image was taken,” the researchers explain.
“It is possible that future administrations could take this case as encouragement to pursue the press under the Espionage Act. It is likely that an emboldened second Trump administration would do so.”
“Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis” opens at Framer Framed, Amsterdam, parsing post-truth infrastructures—the 24-hour news cycle, social media—“where manipulation and obfuscation is the norm rather than the exception.” Seven artists and collectives including Paolo Cirio, Anna Engelhardt & Mark Cinkevich, Ho Tzu Nyen, and UKRAiNATV present works that create new ways of knowing. Cirio’s Climate History (2024, image), for example, compiles a 100-year timeline of economic and political wrong-doing.
Spanning two venues, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s “The song is the call, and the land is calling” opens at Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. At CC, they present May Amnesia: Only Sounds that Tremble Through Us (2020-, image), a poetic remix of social media clips depicting joyful moments of song and dance from Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. The work by the duo—both of Palestinian descent—explores “how shattered communities resist annihilation and reclaim place, self, and community.”
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