FUTURE MANIFESTOS
KJØPMANNSGATA UNG KUNST, 9. APRIL – 31. MAI 2026
Åpning: 9. april 2026 kl.18.00
Kuratorer: Zane Cerpina, Espen Gangvik
Qwen Stefani Against Techfascism [2025]
!Mediengruppe Bitnik [HR/CH/DE]
Qwen Stefani Against Techfascism
Qwen Stefani Against Tech Fascism addresses the growing tech-authoritarian infrastructures that condition our everyday lives and develops a contemporary handbook of resistance to the tech-fascisms of algorithmic control. The work is centred around the virtual character Qwen Stefani, a tech-savvy influencer who opposes the growing influence algorithmic decision-making has on social participation – who has access, who is included, and who is not.
Qwen Stefani is a counter-part to Gwen Stefani, the 90s pop-feminist icon turned conservative Catholic influencer. For a number of years, Gwen Stefani has been promoting the subscription-based Catholic prayer app ‘Hallow’, an app founded with investments by Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance that enmeshes the promise of spirituality within a data economy of surveillance and control. Qwen Stefani balances this with a commitment to the struggle against techfascism. She takes her name from the Chinese generative AI model Qwen.AI, which she was built with.
The blueprint for resistance comes from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a handbook circulated within the anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War. The manual instructs ordinary citizens on how to disrupt and undermine enemy operations in fascist occupied Europe without getting caught. The idea is to slow down work environments by misplacing tools, mistiming orders, or raising quality control to unattainable levels without raising suspicions. This same manual became the most downloaded document within U.S. government administrations following Donald Trump’s re-election in January 2025.
The multi-part installation series immerses visitors in an environment of artificial light, LED-neon signage, sound, and video works. The series consists of multi-screen works, LED-neon signs, and a three-part video installation, as well as some fortune cookies.
Qwen Stefani Simple Sabotage Manual
Red LED neon tubes, galvanized steel mesh, cable ties, cabling, transformers, dimensions variable
For the exhibition at Meta.Morf 2026, four of nine instructions, inspired by the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, are displayed as bright red neon lettering distributed throughout the room. Each phrase is a rendition of a small act of refusal adapted for the digital age: Civil disobedience that interrupts the smooth functioning of the technologies that mediate our lives. They invite to withdraw from permanent connectivity, to allow emotions to interrupt efficiency, and to use humour to expose how deeply technologies structure our daily routines. The simplicity of these tasks, however, underscores a central tension: while everyday disruptions may offer moments of relief or awareness, they cannot meaningfully counter authoritarian technologies on their own. A real shift away from authoritarian technologies requires structural change, collective mobilization, and political decision-making. The Simple Sabotage Field Manual 2025 Series then becomes an invitation to question the systems we inhabit and to demand the conditions for fairer, more inclusive technological infrastructures. The aim is to build connections, ignite new impulses, and open pathways toward empowerment and protest.
The series consists of 9 instructions:
Cry on zoom, Share your accounts, Mislabel data, Corrupt database entries, Unplug ethernet cables, Leave your phone, Tamper with metadata, Leak internal data by accident, Doomscroll at work not in bed.
Qwen Stefani Endlessly Crying
Single channel video, Full HD, 16:9, no sound, loop, multiscreen video wall
Fragmented across 5 screens, an oversized Qwen Stefani cries endlessly. The video and its staging make reference both to representations of mourning women in Christian churches and the highly emotional world of pop culture and social media. A present-day mourning Madonna, Qwen Stefani grieves the loss of personal freedoms, social participation and inclusion – or maybe she is just crying on Zoom.
Doomscroll against Techfascism #SabotageManual #AI #TechTok #Qwenstefani
3-part video installation, Full-HD. 16:9, sound, loop. 14’23”, 14’14”, 13’53”, screens, beanbags, dimensions variable
In short videos Qwen Stefani talks about techfascism, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, and the difficulties with technological systems that are driven by data and AI. Instead of preaching in a church, Qwen Stefani preaches in her natural habitat, the digital space of social media. Divided into three chapters, Qwen Stefani’s shorts appear between reels from social media accounts of artists and theorists whom we follow and appreciate online. Embedded in an ideal doomscroll of inspiring, engaging, and funny reels from artists we admire, Qwen Stefani critically examines technologies of power, including the tools that helped create her.
With many thanks to Anna Engelhardt, Aram Bartholl, Ben Grosser, Benjamin Gaulon, Brad Downey, Caroline Sinders, Class for Networked Materiality, AdBK Nuremberg, Constant Dullaart, Daniel Felstead, Danja Vasiliev, Darsha Hewitt, Dasha Ilina, DISNOVATION. ORG, Esben Holk, Evan Roth, Fabiola Larios Fragmentin, Igor Štromajer, IOCOSE, Jonas Lund, Kathrin Hunze, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Marc Dusseiller, Mario Santamaria, Moises Sanabria, Nadja Buttendorf, Nestor Siré, Paul Feigelfeld, Philipp Meier, S()fia Braga, Sam Lavigne, Sara Bezovšek, Silvia Dal Dosso, Silvio Lorusso, Simon Weckert, Socrates Stamatatos, Super Dakota, Tega Brain, and Valentina Tanni for contributing their videos.
Simple Sabotage Fortune Cookie
Fortune cookie, printed silver foil, 65 x 105 mm
25 instructions to resist a world of techfascisms are baked into fortune cookies to be picked up, taken away, gifted, shared, and spread. The cookies appear as silver-foiled clusters around the video works, an extension of the videos into the space, or, as some would put it: The materialisation of Qwen’s endlessly cried tears.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read – the not Mediengruppe Bitnik) are contemporary artists working on, and with, the Internet. Their practice expands from the digital to physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms.
In the past, they have been known to subvert surveillance cameras, bug an opera house to broadcast its performances outside, send a parcel containing a camera to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and physically glitch a building. In 2014, they sent a bot called «Random Darknet Shopper» on a three-month shopping spree in the Darknets, where it randomly bought items like keys, cigarettes, trainers, and Ecstasy and had them sent directly to the gallery space.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik are Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo. They are based in Berlin.
Photo credits. Portrait photo: !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Studio Berlin, 2022. Photo: Iris Janke / Courtesy !Mediengruppe Bitnik. !Mediengruppe Bitnik, “Computer Says No”, installation view Kunsthalle Osnabrück, 2025. Courtesy the artists. Photo credits: Lucie Marsmann.
