november 13 2025

Collaborative Prototyping Lab Takes Place Ahead of the OpenLAB Festival

Part of the “LAB 4: Strange Futures” program at Medialab Matadero, running until November 26

In the Collaborative Prototyping Lab (CPL), selected projects will expand the notion of Strange Futures, focusing on real events, devices, infrastructures, and protocols.
Working groups are composed of local and international participants from diverse fields such as art, architecture, economics, environmental studies, programming, philosophy, and activism.
Findings will be shared with the public during the OpenLAB Festival, taking place from November 27 to 29, featuring presentations, talks, and performances.

Medialab Matadero, a program of the Department of Culture, Tourism, and Sports, is holding the Collaborative Prototyping Lab (CPL) through November 26 — the core activity of LAB 4: Strange Futures, around which all other events are structured. Its outcomes will be presented from November 27 to 29 during OpenLAB, the closing event where research results will be shared with the public.

Through a public call, Medialab Matadero has selected five projects from different countries to serve as case studies in the CPL. The selection brings together a variety of formats and methods, with the aim of addressing lesser-known or unconventional topics linked to the thematic universe of Medialab and, in particular, LAB 4. The goal is to broaden the concept of strange futures through creative yet rigorous research processes focused on real events, devices, infrastructures, and protocols.

Under the mentorship of Bani Brusadin (curator of LAB 4), Solveig Qu Suess (filmmaker and researcher based in Shanghai), Alex M. F. Quicho (writer and observer of contemporary technological manifestations, based in London), and Joel Blanco (artist, designer, researcher, and consultant), among others, these projects will be developed by interdisciplinary teams including participants from diverse fields such as art, architecture, economics, environmental sciences, philosophy, engineering, social studies, political science, programming, and activism.

As in previous editions, the results and conclusions of the Collaborative Prototyping Lab will be shared with the public during OpenLAB, the final event to be held from November 27 to 29. Over three days of presentations, talks, and performances, Medialab will invite audiences to think from the edges, trace hidden connections, and open space for radical alternatives.

This festival marks the closing of LAB 4: Strange Futures, a program that delves into the technological imagination of instability — its potential, its instrumentalization, and the possible alternatives hidden within its cracks and failures. The event will feature presentations and talks by international experts including Lyndsey Walsh (Unbearable), Nestor Siré and Steffen Köhn (Oracle Index), Roberto Alonso Trillo and Marek Poliks (Exocapitalism: Economies Without Absolutely Any Limits), and Jenn Leung and Daniel Felstead (Welcome to Jankspace, babes), among many others.

Selected Projects for the Collaborative Prototyping Lab

The Collaborative Prototyping Lab is the central activity of LAB 4: Strange Futures, around which all other activities revolve. The five projects selected through an open call come from countries across three continents.

Project 1: Ktown: Future Epistemologies of Intelogenesis — Colectivo Gaara (Spain)
An experimental AI-powered mod of the video game Dwarf Fortress, evoking a speculative world where technological instability is amplified by disruptive events.

Project 2: The Alice Guo Studies Institute (copy) — Mac Andre Arboleda (Philippines)
A research and content production agency that, through the figure of the scammer Alice Guo, investigates pirate strategies, media capabilities, and governance networks.

Project 3: Exploring Militarized Urban Futures — Mark Cinkevich (Belarus / Poland)
This project proposes the creation of an interactive prototype exploring urban spaces shaped by ubiquitous systems of algorithmic surveillance and subtle forms of personalized control.

Project 4: Iblīs Habits a Line — Noura Tafeche (Italy)
A dissection of the NEOM smart megacity as an example of “performative urbanism,” where hyper-stylized representations operate as instruments of authority, extraction, and ethnic cleansing.

Project 5: POCAS – Poca Organización Colaborativa de Auto-servicio — Pablo Somonte Ruano (Mexico / Germany)
POCAS uses economic science fiction to imagine an autonomous mutualist network in an alternate version of contemporary Mexico City, where distributed computing competes with capitalism.

LAB 4: Strange Futures — On the Concept of “Teslaformation”

Strange Futures is curated by Bani Brusadin, a researcher specializing in the intersections of art, digital cultures, and technology — and the politics that emerge from these relationships. His proposal seeks to analyze the keys to a silent yet unstoppable social transformation centered on the concept of teslaformation.

LAB 4: Strange Futures explores extreme cases, radical alternatives, and overtly strange technological narratives that help us understand the shifting relationship between technology and power in 21st-century society — focusing on this irregular, unstable phenomenon of teslaformation. The term not only refers to a new productive model (as Fordism or Toyotism once did) nor merely to a brand or type of technical object, but also to disproportionate, confusing, and still-evolving phenomena.

Exhibition: Collapse of the Weave Function by Metahaven

Alongside the Collaborative Prototyping Lab and the OpenLAB Festival, LAB 4 completes its program with exhibitions, installations, and creative workshops designed to deepen the ideas and content of Strange Futures.

Until November 30, Nave Una at Matadero Madrid hosts the exhibition Collapse of the Weave Function by Metahaven, the Amsterdam-based artistic collective led by Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk. Internationally renowned for their influential work at the intersection of audiovisual languages, design, and critical theory over the past two decades, Metahaven present a poetic intervention aligned with one of LAB 4’s key axes: “soft” science fiction and its resonance with today’s technological tension.

The exhibition features four works: the audiovisual installation Hometown, and the textile pieces Collapse of the Weave Function, Vortices, and Centerless — all commissioned by Medialab Matadero especially for the occasion.