Data↔Worlds
Final Conference of the Second Funding Phase at Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden
Click Here to Register
September 28 to 30, 2026
TUD Dresden University of Technology
Görges-Bau, Helmholtzstraße 9, 01069 Dresden
Keynotes
Louise Amoore (Professor of Political Geography, Durham University)
Joanna Zylinska (Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice, King's College London)
Manuela Naveau (Professor for Interface Cultures / Critical Data, University of Arts Linz)
Exhibition opening
Quadrature, Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden 2026
The Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden is pleased to announce the international conference “Data↔Worlds”, which will take place from September 28 to 30, 2026, at TUD Dresden University of Technology (TUD). The conference marks the conclusion of the lab's second funding phase (2024–2027), which examines the interactions between data-based technologies and social realities under the guiding theme of Data↔Worlds: Sociotechnical and Cultural Syntheses of New Realities.
The conference will explore the multifaceted relationships between data worlds and political decision-making processes, social inequalities, cultural expressions, and ecological conditions. Different forms of knowledge, questions of power and participation, and the role of imaginations, narratives, and images surrounding the topic of data will play a central role.
In addition to the Schaufler Residency 2026 exhibition opening by artist duo Quadrature, the conference will feature keynote lectures by Louise Amoore, whose work examines how data-driven technologies are transforming practices of security, risk, and preemption, with far-reaching implications for society, democracy, and geopolitics, and by Joanna Zylinska, whose work engages with data, media, and art practice from a planetary perspective, addressing deep time, ecological crisis, and the evolving boundaries between human and machine intelligence. In her keynote, “UNBEHAGEN–When Critical Data Touches the Shadow of the Invisible,” Manuela Naveau explores how artistic research can move beyond the mere visualization of data to foster a critical engagement with the systems, imaginaries, and power structures that shape our world. Her perspective opens up new ways of approaching data—not merely as a technological resource, but as a cultural, political, and aesthetic condition of our contemporary reality.
The conference is designed as an open and diverse exchange. It brings together scientists, artists, and practitioners who have collaborated with the Schaufler Lab in a variety of ways in recent years—in academic seminars, symposia, exhibitions, experimental art formats, video productions, and publications. “Data↔ Worlds” offers a space to look back together, share experiences, and develop new perspectives for future projects. The conference language is English.
Schedule:
Monday, 28 September 2026
11:30–12:30
Registration and Welcome Snacks
12:30–13:00
Opening Remarks
13:00–14:30
Keynote
Joanna Zylinska: From Model Collapse to System Failure: Remaking Data for Better Worlds
14:30–15:00
Coffee Break
15:00–16:30
Panel 1 – Data Politics: Data Fascism?
Azadeh Akbari: Big Tech Authoritarianism
Katrin Köppert: “Suicidal Fascism.” Cybernetics and Racial Death
16:30–17:00
Break
17:00–18:30
Keynote
Louise Amoore: Zero Shot World: on the Political Logics of Generative AI (Online)
Tuesday, 29 September 2026
9:30–11:00
Panel 2 – Datafied Decision-Making
Sophia Jaworski: The Foil of Calibration: VOCs and the Datafied Politics of Environmental Pollution Monitoring
Sabrina Pölle: Enhanced Access to Justice or Encoded Inequality? Datafied Decision- Making in Criminal Law
Avinash Sharma: What the Model Cannot Hold: Datafied Decision-Making in the Western Himalaya
11:00–11:30
Coffee Break
11:30–13:00
Panel 3 – Data Hermeneutics
Daria Onitiu: The fallacy of “efficiency” reporting on AI data centre sustainability under the EU recast Energy Efficiency Directive
Cat Ashton: Stirring Stories and Alternative Facts
Ilona Nord: Hermeneutical and Methodological Reflections on Digital Humanities in Religious Education
13:00–14:30
Lunch Break
14:30–16:00
Panel 4 – Data Beliefs
Alexandra Gilliams: The "Myth of the Machine" in AI Art (Online)
Frida Mannerfelt: Like Chalk and Cheese? – Integrating AI literacy and theological literacy in religious practice
Konstanze Möller-Jansen: The Politics of AI
16:00–16:30
Coffee Break
16:30–18:00
Keynote
Manuela Naveau: UNBEHAGEN - When Critical Data Touches the Shadow of the Invisible
19:00
Opening of the Schaufler Residency Exhibition – Quadrature
Wednesday, 30 September 2026
9:00–10:30
Panel 5 – Data Ecologies
Kat Austen: THIRST: Artificial intelligence, agency and the watery bodies of data centres
Paulan Korenhof: Your space or mine? The spatial politics of environmental Digital Twins
10:30–11:00
Coffee Break
11:00–12:30
Panel 6 – Data Epistemologies
Patricia Reed: Data Sensitivity, Modeling Worlds, and World Models
Ludovico Rella: A Full Stack Approach to Data Epistemologies
12:30–12:45
Short Break
12:45–13:30
Closing Plenary
Orit Halpern, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Manuela Naveau, and Joanna Zylinska