Hugarflug 2025 - Unstable Systems by Sigmundur Pall Freysteinsson

Unstable Systems Instability can be a creative force in art, design, and architecture. Artists, designers, and scholars work both with and against systems that are ever-changing, fragile, or unpredictable. Whether dealing with technological systems, ecosystems, social structures, or sensory experiences, instability is often a prerequisite for creation. Instability opens pathways for new ideas and processes, reshaping how we approach and redesign the systems that shape our lives. It can also refer to the creative act itself—one that does not follow predetermined trajectories or established norms. Art, design, and architecture serve as tools to disrupt stable systems and/or shed new light on systems that appear stable but in reality, they are not. No system is truly stable, and when we resist that instability, it becomes a problem. Instability is perhaps the only certainty we can rely on. Hugarflug 2025, the annual conference on artistic research, will take place on September 11–12. It will serve as a platform for research that engages with instability across various systems—from technological advancements such as AI and interactive systems to issues related to politics, society, and the environment. We will explore how instability functions as a tool for generating new possibilities while also fueling unrest and transformation within society and academia. The Iceland University of the Arts invites proposals of all kinds, including presentations of ongoing or completed research by our faculty, students, and collaborators.

Failing Regularly

Andrea Steves, Carrie Hott

Andrea Steves
Artist, researcher and curator.

Andrea Steves is an artist, researcher, curator, and organizer currently based between Vienna, Austria and New York, USA. Her work explores the intersections of capitalism, climate change, ecology, and museums. She is currently a doctoral student in artistic practice at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti - Milan and HDK-Valand at University of Gothenburg.

Carrie Hott
Artist, researcher and educator.

Carrie Hott is an artist, researcher, and educator based between California and Indiana, USA. Her interdisciplinary practice focuses on the opacity of technological infrastructure and how this impacts our sense of agency, time, and self. She is currently Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research

11. - 12. September 2025

Iceland University of the Arts

Friday, 12. september, 2025 - 13:00 - 14:30

3x20 min Presentation + 3x10 min Discussion

Moderator:

Room:

Failing Regularly is a presentation by Andrea Steves and Carrie Hott that provides an overview of the originating context, research, and discoveries of Earth Camp, an interdisciplinary project focused on earth-based intelligence as a foundation for speculative infrastructural proposals. As a project spurred on from the pressure points between the promise of technological infrastructure and the material realities of those impacted by it, Earth Camp seeks to design new proposals for existing extractive systems.

Earth Camp as a title emerges from the recent techno-capitalist obsession with space exploration. Instead of space camp, which focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence, Earth Camp offers a counterpoint rooted in the inherent wisdom of terrestrial systems by unpacking our planet's unstable ecologies.

Earth Camp 2025 was a pilot convening in Windham, New York that took place in early August and gathered artists and technologists to experiment with artist-run infrastructure in a local context. This experimental gathering grappled with the recognition of instability not as a problem to solve but as a necessary potential for dismantling extractive systems.

Participants began collaboration on a solar-powered "Slow Internet" network that embraces interruption, blackouts, and rest—qualities capitalism relentlessly attempts to eliminate in its pursuit of frictionless accumulation. By investigating the tensions between environmental dynamics and human infrastructure, Earth Camp created a space where technological instability becomes a tool for generating more equitable possibilities.

This presentation will share insights from our pilot convening, examining how artist-run infrastructure might contribute to broader conversations about rethinking infrastructures, as both a creative act and a prerequisite for imagining post-capitalist futures beyond the false promise of technological "stability."

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