(Re)Imagining Freedom of Expression in Postdigital Societies

8 October 2025, 6:00 pm @ Austrian UNESCO Commission / Postsparkasse

AI & Creativity

Diversity and freedom of cultural expressions in post-digital societies

This event brings together experts from the fields of art, culture, academia, and activism to discuss key-questions such as: How can we protect the diversity of cultural expression in post-digital societies? How can we strengthen transparency and access? What does creativity mean in the context of artificial intelligence? Should attributes such as intelligence, self-determination, and freedom be exclusively attributed to human beings? How can artistic intuition and subjectivity be represented in algorithms?

Programme

Input talks | 6:00 - 7:00 pm

• Magdalena Reiter, expert in network policy and cultural worker
• Clemens Apprich, Vice Rector for Research and Digitality, and Head of the Department of Media Theory and the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Panel | 7:00 - 8:30 pm
"Hybrid Realities" with Carina Zehetmair, Ali Nikrang, Eva Fischer and Sofia Braga, moderated by Giulia Pelillo

The digital revolution has the potential to decenter anthropocentrism and reorganize power relations." However, the reality is different. Market-dominating platforms have privatized creative content worldwide. Generative AI virtually brings dead celebrities back to life. Digital likenesses reproduce the images of real people to manipulate reality. The panel 'Hybrid Realities' explores the intersection of reality and technology and discusses how creativity can develop new visions of democratic futures in the face of digital technologies.

Registration at www.unesco.at >

2 June 2025, 6:00 pm @ Diplomatische Akademie Wien

Young people are powerful voices in the fight for human rights and against injustice, advocating for peace and taking action against climate collapse.

Members of Generation Z and Generation Alpha are native to both digital and analogue spaces, forming global connections and vibrant youth cultures. Despite their crucial role in shaping the future, they are often excluded from current decision-making processes and face political and social neglect. At the same time, today's youth are growing up in a world marked by ongoing crises and educational inequality. This combination arguably poses one of the greatest threats to the future viability of our societies.

This event explores the diverse, creative, artistic, and innovative ways in which young people voice their concerns, engage with societal challenges, and influence decision-making—while also addressing the limitations, exclusions, and discrimination they continue to face.

7 April 2025, 6:30 pm @ Diplomatische Akademie Wien

This event explores the relationship between freedom of expression and cancel culture by discussing how these terms are invoked to instigate culture wars and stifle dissent in relation to political struggles over public memory, identities and belonging.

Dessy Gavrilova will look at freedom of expression in the context of the current political developments both in the USA and in Europe. How does the dramatic political change that we witness today in the USA and the new regime’s utilization of the topic redefine the battle ground for freedom of expression? Does the frontier of the battle for freedom of speech need to be reframed today, and if so - how? How do progressive agendas like Woke affect the politics of freedom of expression? And can culture survive in the context where “cancel culture” is normalized?

Giulia Pelillo will explore the historical and cultural roots of both the term cancel culture and the practice of cancelling. She elaborates on cancel culture as a cultural product of technological, economic and cultural developments that originated in the 18th and 19th centuries and have been dramatically affected recently by the digitalisation and datafication of communication. Against this background, the talk will look at the politics of cancelling to discuss how freedom of expression can be safeguarded to promote social cohesion rather than polarising societies.