With HAUNTED, the Stadtwerkstatt's annual claim for 2026, STWST proclaims hauntologies between mediality, technologies, ghostly manifestations, revenantism and liminality.

HAUNTED - Statement
HAUNTED Open Call - More Infos soon.
STWST Projects 2026 - Wird ongoing befüllt.

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STWST Annual Claim 2026: With HAUNTED or THE HAUNTED MEDIA, STWST proclaims hauntologies between mediality, technologies, ghostly manifestations, revenantism and liminality.

The term hauntology defines a series of ideas that refer to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as if they were haunting the present. The concepts of haunting and spectres apply to many developments of the present in a bizarre and terrifying way: in the permanent state of multiple crises, it is no longer we who think the crisis, but the crises that think us. And they haunt us. We speak of war, the decline of democratic spheres, the structural violence of technocapitalism, ecological disaster.

Hauntologies, however, can also generate positive hauntings. This refers, for example, to cultural identity concepts that are transferred to the past so that their reality or fiction may better reach the present. In other words: Sun Ra comes from Saturn. Or: Antifa flies to Mars. It is about conjuring up a helpful and well-placed history of ideas that still needs to be stirred up between art, politics, theory and science fiction and everything that seems good and right between fake and fact.

We are interested in hauntologies whose ghosts may manifest themselves in different forms in our consciousness: For example, as ideas that have survived in cracks, corners or as invisible clouds hovering above us, only to take shape again, transformed or not.

The ambiguity and breadth inherent in the concept of hauntology lends itself to the idea of extending the approach to the concept of media – and to contexts of technology and its use. These include: diffuse phenomena, machine hallucinations, the haunting of algorithms, endless loops and undead streams of content, as well as the increasingly ubiquitous and therefore invisible media, medialities and data entities: new narrative spaces, new haunting machines, fluid ghost entities and new software and wetware are to be juxtaposed.

Feedback loops, doomsday scenarios, escapism, old social contradictions and new visions: between the hallucinations of AI systems and human imagination, the media can transcend: here, the media can either speak in séances, or the AI speaks with its LLMs.

Yes, the medium is the medium! With the 2026 annual claim, we don't want to forget the good spirits – and we want to conjure up a better ghost train for everyone.

At the beginning of 2026, a programmatic open call will be published, aimed at critical art, technology and media producers as well as researchers from various fields.

For anyone who already has an idea – and can't wait: office@stwst.at

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Coming soon. See upon, when you can't wait.

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The STWST New Art Context projects 2025 are listed in the following area. The STWST projects and coops of STWST will be continuously updated here.

++ Acht Augen, kopfüber und 70000 Hertz (Eight Eyes, Headfirst and 70,000 Hertz)
Beaver Lab and System Jaquelinde in STWST.

++ MARS PATENT — Catapult
STWST's 'Schlafschif I-III, Aufstand der Imagination' in MOM Art Space in Hamburg