Public lecture Christoph Thun-Hohestein

The Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, within the framework of the Interdisciplinary Program, continues its lecture series. On April 28 (Monday) at 7 PM, Christoph Thun-Hohensteinwill give a lecture on the topic оf

Regenerative Art at the Dawn of Artificial Superintelligence.

In its long-term forecast (10 years), the Global Risks Report 2025 lists the most severe risks as 1. extreme weather events; 2. biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse; 3. critical change to Earth systems, and 4. natural resource shortages. Misinformation and disinformation and adverse outcomes of AI technologies come in 5th and 6th place. “We are either stealing the future or healing the future”, as the US climate and regeneration activist Paul Hawken so aptly stated. The essence of regeneration is giving back more to the Earth than we are taking from it and progressing not at the expense of nature but in complete harmony with it.

Art is free, but that does not mean it is exempt from all responsibility. As a society, we expect it not only to critically address the climate, biodiversity and overall ecological crisis and describe dystopias; what is needed above all is positive artistic imagination to enlighten us how much better a future regenerative world will feel and how we can get there. As our everyday lives are increasingly dominated by artificial general intelligence (AGI) and future superintelligence, we are counting on artistic intelligence to guide us in dealing with AI and to show its concrete potential for our regenerative futures. The starting point is a new understanding of dignity that encompasses not only the dignity of humans, but also that of nature and its other species as well as intelligent “machine beings”. We hope that art will become the driving force of the new age of regeneration and at the same time see in it an inexhaustible “fountain of youth” for its own renewal.
Dr. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein is cultural manager, curator, and author at the interface of fine art, media art, design, architecture and ecology, climate, regeneration as well as digitalization and artificial intelligence.

After studying law, political science, and history of art at the University of Vienna, Thun-Hohenstein worked for the Austrian Foreign Ministry and held posts in Abidjan, Geneva, and
Bonn. He was Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York from 1999 to 2007. From 2022 to 2025, he was Director General for International Cultural Relations at the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
From 2007 to 2011, he served as Managing Director of departure, the Creative Agency of the City of Vienna. From 2011 to 2021, Thun-Hohenstein was General Director and Artistic Director of the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. He initiated the Vienna Biennale for Change, which he directed from 2014 until 2022. Most recently, he initiated the Vienna Climate Biennale, which took place for the first time in 2024.

In 2024, Thun-Hohenstein published the impulse book “Climate Resonance. Reshaping Our Life and Economic Culture” (in German, Spector Books). His current work focuses on the
dignity of nature and of intelligent “machine beings”, and on holistic regeneration and regenerative arts at the dawn of artificial superintelligence.

The exhibition Forms that Fly, International Artists in French Collections, which will be open on 08.04.2025 at 8 pm is the second of the exhibitions planned for 2025 that enable the re – reading of selected works from the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje.

Curator: Matthieu Lelièvre

Collaborator: Nada Prlja

MoCA-Skopje collection artists:

Pierre Alechinsky (BE/FR), Mogens Andersen (DK/FR), Doroteo Arnáiz ( ES/FR), Anna-Eva Bergman (NO/FR), Lars Bo (DK/FR), Angelica Caporaso (AR), Serge Charchoune (RU/FR), Carlos Cruz-Diez (VE/FR), Hisao Domoto (JP/FR), Curt Fors (SE), Carmen Gracia (AR), Étienne Hajdú (RO/FR), Jeremy Gentilli (UK/FR), Terry Haass (CZ/FR), Hans Hartung (DE/FR), Piotr Kowalski, Barbara Kwasniewska (PL/FR), Wifredo Lam (CU/FR), Greta Leuzinger (CH), Charles Loyd (AUS), Gregory Masurovsky (USA/FR), Roberto Matta (CH/FR), Zoran Mušič (SL/FR), Virgilije Nevjestić (CR), Méret Oppenheim (DE/CH), Mario Prassinos (TR/FR), Enrique Peycere (AR/FR), Sérvulo Esmeraldo (BR/FR), Joan Rabascall (SP/FR), François Stahly (DE/FR), Zora Staack (RS/FR), Anna Staritsky (UA/FR), Kumi Sugai (JP), František Tichý (CZ), Victor Vasarely (HU/FR), Bram van Velde (NK/FR), Marcel-Henri Verdren (BE), Vladimir Veličković (RS), Zao Wou-Ki (CN/FR) and Kenji Yoshida (JP).

macLYON collection artists:

Jasmina Čibić (SL/UK), Chourouk Hriech (MA/FR), Danielle Vallet-Kleiner (FR) and Ange Leccia (FR).

The history of twentieth-century art, marked by artists’ displacement and exile, reveals a fascinating diversity of trajectories and practices. After the Second World War, many artists were drawn to Paris, a cosmopolitan city and crossroads where numerous international artistic communities took shape. In post-war Europe, Paris became a veritable breeding ground for artists from the four corners of the globe, who were fleeing totalitarian regimes, violent conflicts or authoritarian artistic doctrines. This artistic dynamism gave rise to a number of important movements, including the “Second School of Paris.”

In the catalogue of the 1966 exhibition of donations,Boris Petkovski, the director of MoCA-Skopje at the time, emphasizes that “this exhibition features works by the most famous French and international artists from the post-war period. The donated works are divided into categories, and the exhibition highlights their connection.” However, when one considers the richness of the French collection, made up of artists with a spectacular diversity of origins, the question arises as to the relevance of a breakdown by nationality.

The exhibition Forms that Fly, International Artists in the French Collections, while including well-established names, takes a particular interest in the work of lesser-known authors – embodied today in the French collection of MoCA-Skopje. As such, the exhibition is a true snapshot of a generation captured with all its doubts and hopes. The creativity to which we are paying tribute today is the fruit of the artistic exchanges of a generation in search of a common language. All languages were mixed together turning Paris into a modern Babel whose common language was art. In this way, the exhibition reconstitutes a “fictitious community” allowing us to blur the lines and imagine artistic encounters in studios, private academies, the Paris School of Fine Arts, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, among others. Above all, this exhibition celebrates these shared pathways and displacements.

To pay tribute to the artists represented in the Skopje collection, the exhibition also features a selection of works from the collection of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Based on key themes based around the artists’ displacement, travel and the donated works, the selection of works from macLYON likewise encourages an intergenerational and institutional dialogue between the two museums.

Media relations: Angelika Apsis (MoCA-Skopje), graphic design: Ilijana Petrushevska (MoCA-Skopje), conservation: Jadranka Milčovska (MoCA-Skopje), coordination of the selection of works from the MoCA-Skopje collection: Iva Petrova Dimovski and Blagoja Varošanec, printing of the work by Chourouk Hriech: Promedia.

The exhibition is realised in collaboration between MoCA-Skopje, macLYON, the French Embassy, the French Institute in Skopje, and the city of Lyon.

The Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje and the Faculty of Fine Arts, UKIM – Skopje, invite you to the “45 Years” exhibition. The exhibition features a selection of 45 works, from 45 authors, from the MoCA collection and works owned by artists – FFA teachers (since its founding to date), emphasizing the course of artistic expressions and practices in the last four and a half decades. The exhibition is accompanied by documentary articles in the history and activities of the FFA in order to valorize the inheritance of the faculty, but also to open new perspectives for its future.