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.

Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research

11. - 12. September 2025

Iceland University of the Arts

Insatiable Pulse: Artistic Research into Algorithmic Dependency and Bionic Existence

Christiane Peschek

This presentation investigates the ontological condition of bionic existence through the lens of Christiane Peschek’s artistic practice, which is shaped by a lived dependency on a pacemaker—an algorithmic device that sustains her heartbeat. Positioned at the intersection of posthuman theory, digital materialism, and embodied critique, Peschek explores how algorithmic precision becomes a prerequisite for survival and an invisible authority within the body. Her practice—spanning immersive installations, environmental fieldwork, and sensorial rituals—emerges from this condition of continuous reliance on non-human systems. By framing the pacemaker as both life-sustaining infrastructure and philosophical agent, she argues that bionic existence fosters a unique form of affective precarity, revealing deeper entanglements between human vulnerability and machinic logic. The presentation reflects on how this condition informs aesthetic decisions, temporal perception, and emotional resonance, offering insights into the broader implications of technological dependency in the context of the Anthropocene.

Christiane Peschek
Artist

Christiane Peschek is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher whose work navigates states of identity in the extreme present, shaped by techno-shamanism, cosmology, and speculative fiction. Living with a terminal illness and sustained by an artificial heartbeat, her practice emerges from a factual dependency on technology and a lived experience as a hybrid being. Across immersive installations and environmental research trips, she explores the visibility of bionic existence and the emotional co-dependency between nature and machine. Her work engages with the affective realities of a digitally augmented zeitgeist and is part of major international collections, with exhibitions at Kunsthalle Erfurt, Museum MARTA Herford, Centre Culturel Suisse Paris, NRW Forum Düsseldorf, Benaki Museum Athens, Kunsthaus Graz, and gallery shows in London, Dubai, New York, Düsseldorf, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and Berlin.

Friday 12. september, 2025 - 14:45 - 16:15

3x20 min Presentation + 3x10 min Discussion

Moderator: Thomas Edouard Pausz

Room: Bratti

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