A synthetic influencer cries, addresses the camera and recomposes herself to the rhythm of a social feed. In Qwen Stefani Against Techfascism, !Mediengruppe Bitnik turns this manufactured closeness into the material of a video work: to whom do we give our attention, trust and capacity to act? The character’s political speech belongs to the work’s fiction. Her tears, gestures and fragmented images shift the boundary between lived and programmed emotion.
The project also takes the form of a figure split across several screens. Presented at Ars Electronica 2026, this incarnation distributes one face through space: the intimacy of a phone becomes a collective, almost monumental presence.
Location. ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY, online exhibition from 21 September 2026. The project was also presented at Ars Electronica, Seminary Church Heiligen Kreuz, Linz, Austria, 9–13 September 2026.
The artists. Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo form !Mediengruppe Bitnik, a Berlin-based duo whose practice crosses the internet, software, moving image, installation and interventions into networked systems.
Documentation. Project begun in 2025. The first video part, dated 2025, was uploaded by Annka Kultys to Vimeo on 3 October 2026; this is not the work’s creation date. Online exhibition.