Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz will present ‘Negotiating Humanity’, an exhibition bringing together works by six winners of the Prix Ars Electronica and the European Commission’s S+T+ARTS Prize. The projects address changing ideas of human identity and challenge conventional assumptions about what it means to be human.
The exhibition forms part of the 2026 Ars Electronica programme, which examines what the festival describes as an “anthropological crisis” through three exhibitions. Its broader concerns range from Paleolithic rock art to the age of artificial intelligence, placing technological, ecological and political upheavals within a long history of attempts to define humanity.
At Lentos, the focus is on projects recognised by two prize networks associated with media art and interdisciplinary practice. The announcement does not identify the six participating artists, nor does it provide individual work titles or details of the installations. It characterises the selected projects collectively as serious inquiries into a category—“human”—that is often treated as self-evident.
The exhibition is included in the festival’s ‘Festival Walk’, a route beginning at OK Platz and extending through eight venues in Linz. The walk connects exhibitions and media-art presentations in locations that include a school, churches and a hospital, rather than relying exclusively on conventional gallery spaces. According to the festival description, those sites are intended to reflect the social processes through which people negotiate ideas of humanity and establish what counts as truth.
‘Negotiating Humanity’ is distinct from the parallel exhibition ‘Negotiating Beyond Humanity’, which will be installed in the attics of Ursulinenhof. That presentation expands the festival’s theme toward more-than-human perspectives and draws on encounters from the Studiotopia Residency Programme. Its stated subjects include microbial exchange and transformations of the global ecosystem, directing attention to forms of life and ecological processes beyond ordinary human perception.
The 2026 Ars Electronica programme will also include the Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition, presented in collaboration with the University of Art and Design Linz, with positions from 45 universities worldwide. Elsewhere in the festival, the Ars Electronica Center will launch new exhibitions, while the MED CAMPUS will host an Art & Science presentation involving research connected with Johannes Kepler University. The source announcement provides no opening or closing dates for ‘Negotiating Humanity’.
