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.
