Since 2023, I have been co-curating the Ars Electronica Animation Festival, the annual showcase of New Animation Art within the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. Embedded in the framework of the Prix Ars Electronica, the yearly showcase is drawn from the annual submissions to the competition—typically around 1,000 entries each year—and profiles animation as a critical and experimental artistic practice. My curatorial work involves developing the annual thematic framework, shaping the program, and inviting artists to participate in public talks, presentations, and Q&A sessions.

Across the editions I have co-curated (2023–2025), the selection foregrounded new forms of animation art, including AI-generated and synthetic imagery, speculative and documentary storytelling, cinematic deepfakes, scientific and data visualizations, real-time graphics, and CGI powered by game engines. Each edition also responded to the overarching Ars Electronica Festival theme.

Between 2023 and 2025 I have moderated artist talks and Q&A sessions with Timothy Thomasson, Nicolas Gourault, Rachel Maclean, Jeremy Kamal, Miwa Matreyek, Akiko Nakayama, Rebecca Merlic a.o.

Animation Festival on Tour program is an international traveling showcase organized in collaboration with the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. The program brings highlights of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival to international audiences through Austrian embassies, cultural forums, cinemas, galleries, and partner festivals. Each year, selected works from the program are presented in at least 25 venues worldwide, extending the festival’s curatorial framework into diverse cultural and geopolitical contexts.

2023 AI & HUMAN / DATA BODIES SPACE

The 2023 edition was structured around two curatorial threads: one explored posthuman scenarios and more-than-human ecologies, another explored ethics and politics of artificial intelligence, engaging with issues such as data ownership, data harvesting, authorship, and image credibility in the age of AI.

2024 H-O-P-E

HOPE was the overarching theme of Ars Electronica Festival 2024, We understood hope as the underlying emotion that translates into various actions and tendencies shaping the future. H-O-P-E became the springboard for four interconnected concepts: Healing, Otherness, Paradox, and Entanglement. The program was structured around these four strands, with several animation selected works belonging to each concept.

2025 PANIC

The 2025 edition addressed states of panic as a defining condition of the present — ecological, technological, psychological, and political. The selection featured a mix of synthetic, AI-generated visions of catastrophe combined with more poetic and introspective CGI works and game engine aesthetics. Animation became a space to articulate unease while critically engaging with the aesthetics of catastrophe, continually reasserting the sense of PANIC that defines our contemporary condition.

Photos: Photo: Tom Mesic / Ars Electronica