LAB 5 at Medialab Matadero launches with workshops, seminars, exhibitions, and public activities

• Key activities include the ‘Systems Studio’ creative research and training program, a ‘Collaborative Prototyping Laboratory,’ and the OpenLAB festival.
• Between May and October, ‘Systems Studio’ will offer a program of seven workshops and seminars on the themes of LAB 5, led by international specialists.
• The open call for projects and collaborators to participate in the ‘Prototyping Laboratory’ is open until June 15.
• On October 15, a collective exhibition featuring unpublished, site-specific works by five international artists will open in Nave Una at Matadero.

Medialab Matadero, a program of the Madrid City Council’s Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, presents its new LAB, an annual multidisciplinary research and production laboratory. Between May and November, it will host an open call for collaborative projects alongside an extensive program of workshops, seminars, exhibitions, and public activities aligned with Medialab's primary research initiatives.

LAB 5, curated by Bani Brusadin, is titled ‘The Mechanics of Truth’ and focuses on one of the great questions of our time: how technologies are changing our way of understanding what is real and what is credible. The program stems from a highly relevant premise: we live in a moment where images, narratives, data, and interfaces do not merely describe the world—they construct, distort, or even confuse it. Faced with this scenario, LAB 5 brings together creators, researchers, and specialists from diverse fields to explore how truth, lies, and the ‘grey zone’—where facts lose weight to seduction, fiction, or manipulation—are produced today.

Collaborative Prototyping Laboratory and OpenLAB

The ‘Collaborative Prototyping Laboratory’ and the OpenLAB festival have become the two flagship events of Medialab’s annual program.

The ‘Collaborative Prototyping Laboratory’ is an intensive workshop for the collaborative development of five experimental projects. For two weeks, from November 12 to 25, a group of twenty emerging creators selected through an open call will work together, supported by three internationally renowned specialists: Italian artist, architect, and researcher Lucia Rebolino (specializing in spatial visualization and experimental interface design); Austrian scholar Sophie Publi (expert in the study of subcultures and digital aesthetics); and counter-forensic designer Júlia Nueno Guitart (focusing on algorithmic environments and data research aesthetics).

The co-authors of the five prototypes, the mentors, and other guest speakers will feature in the fifth edition of OpenLAB from November 26 to 28. This festival includes conferences, project presentations, workshops, and performances, converging all of Medialab’s research on the theme of ‘The Mechanics of Truth.’

Research and Training Program

Following pilot activities in 2025, Medialab is launching a new programming line focused on the training, professionalization, and internationalization of the local creative community. Under the title ‘Systems Studio,’ a periodic program of workshops and seminars will be organized, led by national and international experts. From May to October, the program will address various thematic axes of LAB 5, such as the historical relationship between the use of specific technologies and the perception of the world, and the proliferation of techniques capable of generating ambiguous but subtly impactful images, sounds, and phenomena—such as digital occultism—in which facts are shrouded in a kind of technological mist.

The program of public activities will be inaugurated by the award-winning Polish artist, researcher, and designer based in Berlin, Martyna Marciniak, who will lead the workshop ‘Anatomy of a Non-Fact’ from May 7 to 9. This workshop serves as an introduction to the visual literacy methods necessary for addressing the proliferation of synthetic images. Drawing on the artist's creative work and experience in forensic analysis, the workshop aims to address the ‘reality effects’ of image generation using methods that possess both scientific rigor and experimental potential. Registration for this workshop will be available on the Medialab Matadero website in early May.

Collective Exhibition

As a new feature of this edition of LAB 5, and closely related to its research lines, a collective exhibition featuring unpublished, site-specific works by five international artists will open on October 15 in Nave Una at Matadero Madrid.

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