Issue 64 / January 2026
eds. Birgit Mersmann, Hauke Ohls and Xie Wen

(Un)Real. Curating the Digital in the Age of AI

Digital technologies, blockchain cultures, and artificial intelligence are transforming how reality is produced, perceived, and curated. In this shifting terrain, curating no longer denotes the organization of objects in space but the navigation between physical and virtual worlds, between human and machine agency.  The contributions in this issue examine how digital, web-based, and AI-induced formats reconfigure exhibition logics, participation, and mediation, while raising questions of alienation, spectacle, and decentralization. They range from hybrid reactivations of historical exhibitions and digital archives resisting information erosion, to Web3-driven experiments and collaborative ecologies of generative AI. At the center lies the question of how curatorial practice can remain critical, resistant, and situated amid technological acceleration. Here, the (Un)Real appears as a condition that shapes curatorial work across realities — opening interstitial spaces, enabling moments of delay, and upholding human negotiation within algorithmic environments.

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