Life is in crisis. In society, this crisis has generated an uncertainty entangled with environmental injustices, health emergencies and the many faces of right-wing movements around the world – to mention some examples. Uncertainty might blurry the future and our capacity to make decisions, but it also opens up a space of possibilities. In this fragmented framework a new field for contingencies emerges. If we are unsure about what might be, alternative but unstable scenarios become possible. How does society react to those alternative scenarios? How are scientific and artistic communities responding to the various contingencies of the present?

In an area afflicted with multifaceted conflicts, art can become an agent for dialogue, an agent for resolution, or it can get itself involved in the clash. The goal of this edition of POM will be to tackle art practices and the relation of art to the machine. In parallel, it will also focus on understanding the influence and relation between art and conflict. POM will tend to explore the connection between the violence of conflict and violence as a process in art production; the role of conflict in the sociopolitical environment and how it relates to the field of art, science, and technology.

The question of how the machine impacts and contextualizes artistic production and perception is the overall topic of the conference. Recent research on the impact of machines and technology on art places the machine in the centre of ‘ecologies’ (Fuller), ‘archaeologies’ (Parikka) and ‘aesthetics of interaction’ (Kwastek) pointing towards a ‘techno-ontology’ (Broeckmann).