11 – 25 November 2025

Artist: Žarko Aleksić / Laurus Edelbacher / Azalea Ortega Flores

Curator: Deniz Güvensoy

Fabrikraum Kunstverein, Vienna

host_age:// is a play on words that explores the dynamics between “host” and “hostage,” two intertwined concepts that define contemporary political space. It’s a curatorial research project that examines how security and control have come to replace free will, privacy, and democracy. Today’s political and spatial order operates on two levels — digital and territorial.

The host may be a platform, a state, or a citizen; the hostage, an online user or resident. The exhibition questions how hosts and guests become trapped in a vicious circle, slowly transforming into hostages – the symbolic figure of our era —by drawing on the concept of hospitality, which constructs political space while carrying hostility at its core.
The agency of the subject is challenged in the post-control society, where one is constrained not only by territorial borders but also by so-called “personal choices.” The reference to programming language in the title points to networks, data extraction, and algorithmic governance – systems that hold us voluntarily hostage.
Featuring works by Žarko Aleksic, Laurus Edelbacher, and Azalea Ortega Flores, the exhibition explores the relationship between media manipulation, affective capitalism, and border and surveillance technologies through neuroscience, emotion-driven systems, and immersive D3 environments.