69+ artists, scientists and activists in 16 countries #SWANA #AFRICA #EUROPE #ASIA with 13 extraordinary creatives radically collaborating within an intensive laboratory while hosting more than 50 events: incl. performances, workshops, panels, sounds, lectures, exhibitions , screenings and a globally supervised VR hackathon.

The past few decades have witnessed a tremendous proliferation of digital technology. References to a techno-utopia where knowledge would be available to each and all seemed to signal the possibility of positive social and cultural change while acknowledging a ​fundamental flaw.​ Digital technologies’ commitment to making knowledge accessible to all would supposedly produce a universal benefit and wellbeing which was partly realized but digital technologies did in no way result in a techno-utopia.

It has become apparent that besides letting vast amounts of knowledge accessible to ever more people, digital technologies are also powerful tools producing a ​peculiar kind of public ignorance​, one that seems to proliferate amidst ever multiplying information and knowledge available in today’s digitalised environment.

Ignorance​ is increasingly being supported by the images of today's information technology. It is vast, connected and controlling all aspects of our lives. The algorithmic governance, artificial intelligence, and expertized knowledge from ​art to science, to politics, and to popular culture ​create a fear of knowing where ordinary people feel they are inferior to the vast knowledge and capacities to process it. There are things that we may know, we like to know, we need to know, we have the right to know and we have to know; as well as “not to know” respectively. However, it seems that the contemporary culture ​of ignorance is positively trending and becoming a commonplace ideological stance all over the world.

With ​a’21 Festival - Post Digital Ignorance x Techno Utopia,​ we aim to challenge the status quo while centering perspectives on ​non-human life, queer ecology, decolonising knowledge, forced displacement, and more.