Error 417 x 𰄡𰁇𰀲𰂈𰀁L𰀅𰀙 𰄢𰀀𰆐𰀉𰀹𰁂𰅱𰄸

OpenLAB marks the closing of LAB 4 Weird Futures, a program that explores the technological imagination of instability – its power, its instrumentalization, and the possible alternatives hidden within its cracks and failures.

Medialab Matadero brings together artists, technologists, designers, thinkers, and engaged publics to investigate the intersections between technological imagination and a society that oscillates between the desire for control and the extreme volatility of the present.

Both Medialab Matadero and Error 417 share a critical stance toward dominant technological narratives by questioning techno-solutionism and control. We encourage collaboration across fields and public engagement to rethink agency under technological domination. Our organisations each invite creative, situated forms of resistance – whether through “scores” (instructions, acts, interventions) or speculative exploration of “radical alternatives.” Both frame art as a means to expose and subvert technological ideologies – turning dystopian aesthetics and weird imaginaries into spaces of political imagination.

As part of the conference program from 27-29 November 2025 at Matadero in Madrid, we present three events:

Petaflops Against Empire is a series of speculative prototypes, micro-scripts, and instructions/hacks that explore how we can reclaim collective computing power. The project stems from Navrot’s imagination of concrete apartment blocks in his hometown of Wronki, Poland, where he envisioned a scenario in which the residents of post-PRL apartments run their own their modular furniture building GPU micro servers. The project focuses on reclaiming microcomputing power, among other methods, from advertising trackers that operate in all browsers, but also explores the connection of computers in networks and, in general, the search for computing power wherever it may be hidden. In this session Navrot will provide a fictional/speculative framework in which all participants will interact with different roles in a future or potential scenario that will be inspired by Navrot's research and his own experience rooted in the reality of Eastern Europe.

Lyndsey Walsh proposes to examine the history, present, and potential futures of reproductive technologies and so-called reproductive organs, while challenging the doomed narrative of “breeding” that has condemned many and cost countless lives. Building off their speculative “unbearable organs” that blur the boundaries between male and female while also escaping binary censorship of digital regimes, Lyndsey will unfold the history of care, systemic violence, and possible futures of material potential that so-called “reproductive organs” find themselves at the mercy of, extending beyond national borders and intersecting with global issues of healthcare, systemic racism and classism, ableism, sexism, and more.

What if off-grid communication was not the last resort, but the first choice? What if it could circulate as effortlessly as any everyday accessory? 868labs invites participants to a speculative workshop that reimagines communication beyond centralized infrastructures. The session introduces a series of open-source wearable devices built on the LoRa protocol, enabling peer-to-peer messaging without the global internet, SIM cards, or any external backbone. Developed in response to growing censorship, surveillance, and the erosion of digital autonomy, 868 Wearables functions both as a tool of infrastructural resistance and as a speculative artifact asking how communication might look if it were local, embodied, and self-sustaining. In this session participants will unpack the political and technical contexts of network dependency, experiment hands-on with mesh communication devices, and collectively imagine new, bodily forms of connection for the realities of today.

Check out the full festival and conference program with project presentations, talks, performative lectures, professional meetings, and music:

And read our interview with Bani Brusadin, the curator and director of Medialab Matadero in Madrid, whom we collaborated with for our funding program Error 415 Unsupported Media Type: