Saturday–Sunday 11am–1pm
BINÁLÉ 2025 — WE ARE NOT ALONE
Alienation, Otherness, and Communion in the Digital Age
September 17 – October 26, 2025 • Merlin, City Hall Park, Budapest
Curators: Viola Lukács, Júlia Neudold
As Budapest’s independent expanded media art biennial BINÁLÉ approaches its conclusion, TECHNOGULYÁS transforms it into a site of resonance and relation—where cooking and techno emerge as parallel technologies of being-together. On October 26, the closing event extends the biennial’s central inquiry: how to inhabit the world otherwise, in company.
Gathering artists, collectives, and thinkers from across the globe, BINÁLÉ reimagines the “alien” not as spectacle, but as relation: ethical, aesthetic, and civic. Through installations, participatory environments, and shared acts of attention, the biennial invites new forms of perception, empathy, and technological imagination, affirming that cultural life must remain porous, plural, and attuned to the presence of others.
TECHNOGULYÁS carries this proposition into a sensorial and collective ritual: techno as communion, cooking as embodied care. The evening unfolds through performative lectures by Dr. Anita Jóri and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, Phantomset’s and DVX NVX’s industrial soundscapes, and Nano VJs’ live projections—culminating in the shared pulse of Ferkó Ferrari and FeketeJee.
Philosophical Foundation
The curatorial frame insists that we no longer imagine the “alien” as external or distant, but as a condition of relation. Here, “otherness” spans machine learning systems, speculative extraterrestrials, nonhuman ecologies, and the intimate strangeness within ourselves. BINÁLÉ 2025 asks what forms of attention, responsibility, and shared practice become possible if we refuse the fantasy of separateness.
As Donna Haraway reminds us: “We require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations… Alone, we succumb to despair.”
This reflection resonates with the posthumanist currents shaping the biennial. It also intersects with the work of philosopher Yuk Hui, whose cosmotechnical thought proposes that every culture’s relationship to technics is plural and situated, an essential counterpoint to universalizing narratives of technology. BINÁLÉ takes this as a mandate: to gather diverse epistemologies and aesthetic practices, creating a pluriverse of encounters.
Techno Culture as Practice
The biennial highlights techno culture not as entertainment but as an archive and a method. In collaboration with the Party Archive Research Group, BINÁLÉ 2025 stages techno as research-in-action—an experiment where sonic and social architectures fold into collective memory. Within this framework, the dance floor, the lecture hall, and the screen appear not as opposites but as shared sites of encounter and possible communion.
Parties, raves, and electronic rituals become laboratories for collective intensity and the rehearsal of new forms of togetherness, transforming the festival into a living ecology of sound, gesture, and code.
Artists and Works
International and intercultural by design, the biennial is a public statement: we are connected.
Agoston Nagy (HU) • Carsten Nicolai (DE) • Daito Manabe (JP) • Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst (US/UK/DE) • Kitzinger Gábor / Nagy András László / Mákó Rozi (HU) • Kurt Hentschläger (AT/US) • Nam June Paik (US/KR) • Ryoji Ikeda (JP) • Sarah Friend (CA/DE) • Sarfenstein Ditta (HU) • Jenny Holzer (US) • Hito Steyerl (DE) • Mitchell F. Chan (CA) • EJTECH (HU/MX) • Dorka Berkes (HU/A) • Mátyás Kálmán (HU) • Trevor Paglen (US) • Hua Wang (CN/DE) • Kim Le Boutin (FR)• Barna Szász (HU/US) • Bendegúz Zsembery (HU)
Spanning installation, public art, data aesthetics, interactive sculpture, LED philosophies, and AI-generated voices, their practices converge to affirm BINÁLÉ’s central claim: cultural life must resist isolationism and nationalism, insisting instead on porous and multitude.
Curatorial Framework
BINÁLÉ 2025 unfolds along three interwoven strands, each addressing the tension and potential within the concept of otherness:
Encounters with the Alien and the Question of the Other Works by Daito Manabe, Ryoji Ikeda, Carsten Nicolai, Nam June Paik, and Trevor Paglen explore nonhuman agency, algorithmic matter, and the infrastructures that watch and shape us.
Science Fiction and the Politics of the Unknown
Hito Steyerl, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Kurt Hentschläger, Sarah Friend, and Mitchell F. Chan investigate speculative tools and worlds where identity, power, and accountability are reprogrammed.Deep Relations and Collective Practices
Through works by Jenny Holzer, EJTECH, Berkes Dorka, and Kim Le Boutin, the biennial proposes care and participation as aesthetic and political gestures, transforming spectatorship into shared presence.
0xCollection
Central to BINÁLÉ 2025 is its partnership with 0xCollection, a pioneering force in digital and experiential art based in Basel. Founded in 2023 by Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist Karel Komárek, 0x functions as a multidisciplinary platform spanning exhibitions, research, and education.
Artist-driven and internationally networked, 0xCollection redefines collecting as more than acquisition—it expands into commissioning, co-producing large-scale works, and collaborating with institutions and biennials worldwide. By supporting artists at the point of production, 0x ensures that innovative practices in new media and time-based art are not only safeguarded but materially realized and shared. Its curatorial frameworks—ranging from Synesthetic Immersion to Frames of Reference—continually reframe how the cultural legacy of the technopocene is written.
Collaborative Vision
Curated by Viola Lukács and Júlia Neudold, the biennial is realized in collaboration with artists who extend its ethos into spatial, sonic, and visual dimensions: Máté Serflek (design), Gábor Kitzinger (animations), and Rozi Mákó (soundscapes).
Presented in partnership with 0xCollection and Örkény István Theatre, BINÁLÉ 2025 embraces an interdisciplinary mode—bridging media art, performance, and critical research.
The biennial also benefits from strong academic alliances with Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) and the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, expanding its pedagogical reach and embedding critical inquiry into artistic practice. Its technology partner, Realis, provides infrastructural expertise, ensuring that ambitious media works can be produced and sustained at scale.
A Cultural Proposal
Emerging from the politically charged climate of Eastern Europe, BINÁLÉ asserts itself as an independent cultural platform. It reimagines democratic norms through posthumanist and non-Western epistemologies, refusing the human as the sole measure of value.
In this sense, WE ARE NOT ALONE is less an exhibition than a proposition: to acknowledge the alien not as an external invader but as a partner in a fragile, interconnected world.
Public Programs
BINÁLÉ’s program extends into participatory performances, workshops, and open laboratories that invite visitors to become co-authors of the biennial experience:
Örkény Theatre × BINÁLÉ: a participatory performance inspired by Klara and the Sun
Party / Research-in-Action: rave and archival experiment with Dr. Anita Jóri (CTM Festival) and the Party Archive Research Group
Game Lab: public sessions for Ladyboss and Zantar, followed by an artist-lecture with Mitchel F. Chan
Ethics of Raving Workshop: interactive engagements with curator Viola Lukács and Liliána Simon
Lectures by Kurt Hentschläger, Sarah Friend, and Hua Wang.