DATAS: Data and Sovereignty: A new international project addresses one of the most pressing questions of our digital age: How do computing technologies, automation, and digital infrastructures affect our personal and state sovereignty?
The Goethe-Institut, the Rudolfinum Gallery, and MeetFactory are cooperating in a new international project with partners from Slovenia, Estonia, and Ukraine. Over the next 18 months, it will examine how computing technologies, automation, and digital infrastructures influence and challenge personal and state sovereignty.
“The use of new technologies in art and society is always the cause of intensive debate,” explains Julia Bailey, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery. “With DATAS, we want to draw attention to the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence in art, raise the question of who really controls our data, and explore how personal freedom and political self-determination can be preserved.” The results will be presented in a large exhibition opening on 10 June 2026 at the Rudolfinum Gallery.
The project networks artists, cultural institutions, and an interested public under expert guidance to find answers to questions of the digital present. “In a world where global politics and social structures are increasingly shaped by large corporations with access to big data and algorithmic systems, we want to offer an artistic perspective as a counterbalance to the normalisation of surveillance and digital control,” says Inka Jelínková Jurková, project leader of DATAS at the Goethe-Institut.
Currently, the artistic residencies of eight international artists, selected from 149 applications, are underway. The first of them, Belarusian artist Mark Cinkevich, is dedicating himself to the question of how infrastructures and visual technologies structure power relations — with a particular focus on post-Soviet social contexts. His work will be presented on 14 August at Prague’s MeetFactory as part of a guided studio tour.
The project DATAS: Data and Sovereignty runs until December 2026 and is organised by the Goethe-Institut, the Rudolfinum Gallery, and MeetFactory from the Czech Republic in cooperation with Project Atol from Slovenia, Izolyatsia from Ukraine, and Tallinn Art Hall from Estonia. The endeavour is funded by the EU programme Creative Europe. The artistic residencies take place in all participating countries, with workshops and presentations held among others in Prague at MeetFactory and the Goethe-Institut. The project concludes with a large exhibition in June 2026 at the Rudolfinum Gallery, Prague.
Further information can be found at: www.goethe.de/datas
