Tue, 5.5.2026
6 PM
6 PM
Talk Discussion Symposium
Felix Lenz in conversation with Janina Falkner, Head MAK 3 Education and Outreach
Artist Talk Soft Image, Brittle Grounds
Felix Lenz in conversation with Janina Falkner, Head MAK 3 Education and Outreach
Tue, 5.5.2026 6 pm — 7.30 pm
MAK Direktion für Alle
© Felix Lenz / Jaakko Taavila
© Felix Lenz / Jaakko Taavila
© Felix Lenz / Jaakko Taavila
Previous Image
The 30-minute essay film Brute Force [Exhibition Cut] (2025) traces the infrastructures and instruments that capture and process images and data—from subatomic particles to planetary-scale imaging—revealing their environmental impact and geological imprints. Filmed across multiple countries, including key scenes at the salt lakes and salt deserts of Utah and California, the film approaches salt as an archive of the absence of water—as a material index of climate calamity, resource depletion, and their unequal distribution. Brute Force was co-directed with Ganaël Dumreicher.
The newly developed three-channel video installation Valley of the Heart’s Delight (2025) performs a shift from the planetary to the local and situated. The title references the historical name of the once fertile land, now known as Silicon Valley. Captured through the lens of an industrial robotic arm, layers of soil and crushed white shells evoke the sacred shellmounds of the Indigenous Ohlone people: Burial grounds and remnants of ancestral life that now lie hidden beneath corporate headquarters. Behind the smooth façades of technocratic ideologies, the installation reveals the ongoing erasure of marginalized voices and cultures.
Soft Image, Brittle Grounds prompts reflection on the entangled relations of technology, ecology, and inequality, raising the question of who has access to information, who holds interpretive authority, and whose histories are displaced by dominant narratives of progress.
With Soft Image, Brittle Grounds, Felix Lenz represented Austria at the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition, commissioned by the MAK and funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport. Entitled Inequalities, this Triennale focused on the growing social, economic, and ecological disparities which are further aggravated by the climate crisis and rapid technological developments.
Curator: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection
The exhibition is the MAK’s contribution to the 2026 Klima Biennale Wien.
Free participation with a valid museum ticket
The newly developed three-channel video installation Valley of the Heart’s Delight (2025) performs a shift from the planetary to the local and situated. The title references the historical name of the once fertile land, now known as Silicon Valley. Captured through the lens of an industrial robotic arm, layers of soil and crushed white shells evoke the sacred shellmounds of the Indigenous Ohlone people: Burial grounds and remnants of ancestral life that now lie hidden beneath corporate headquarters. Behind the smooth façades of technocratic ideologies, the installation reveals the ongoing erasure of marginalized voices and cultures.
Soft Image, Brittle Grounds prompts reflection on the entangled relations of technology, ecology, and inequality, raising the question of who has access to information, who holds interpretive authority, and whose histories are displaced by dominant narratives of progress.
With Soft Image, Brittle Grounds, Felix Lenz represented Austria at the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition, commissioned by the MAK and funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport. Entitled Inequalities, this Triennale focused on the growing social, economic, and ecological disparities which are further aggravated by the climate crisis and rapid technological developments.
Curator: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection
The exhibition is the MAK’s contribution to the 2026 Klima Biennale Wien.
Free participation with a valid museum ticket
