DATAS: The Data and the Sovereign

Who controls our data, personal sovereignty, and political freedom? The exhibition DATAS: The Data and the Sovereign offers answers, with Czech and international artists exploring how computational technology, automation, and digital infrastructures threaten personal and state sovereignty. The project is co-financed by the European Union under the Creative Europe programme.

This group exhibition focuses on one of the key struggles of the coming decade: the fight for self-determination in an age when data and computational technology increasingly escape legal and political control. Algorithmic systems influence public debate, automate decision-making, and dictate the shape of warfare. The exhibition brings together art, philosophy, and technology, asking how personal and national self-determination can survive in the face of surveillance capitalism and authoritarianism.

The featured works include interactive installations, narrative films, and software art. The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections: "Shadows of Leviathan" examines data as sovereign power, algocracy, and automated governance; "Islands of Disobedience" explores infrastructure—energy grids, submarine cables, and data centres—and their ecological consequences; "Songs of Refusal" turns attention to personal autonomy in conditions of profiling, prediction, and surveillance.

A publication with the same title accompanies the exhibition. The exhibition was created as part of the DATAS: The Data and the Sovereign project (2025–26), which serves as a platform for artists from Central and Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and other regions.

– Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, exhibition curator

Exhibiting artists: aaajiao, Tekla Aslanishvili, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán, Mark Cinkevich, Critical Tech Group (Nazar Golianych and Nastia Kolodka), Nina Davies, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Anna Engelhardt, eeefff, fantastic little splash (Lera Malchenko and Oleksandr Hants), Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Flaka Haliti, Tamara Kametani, Áron Lődi, Artur Magrot, Martyna Marciniak, Leon Sahiti, Rudolf Samohejl, Sfera (Sylvia Rybak, Marco Winter and Ula Sowa)