EVENT: RESILIENT GLITCHES / HYPERNOMA (5-14 JUNE 2026, GRAZ, AUSTRIA)
RESILIENT GLITCHES / HYPERNOMA
Programme focus: Media art, game culture, digital play, activism, workshops, lectures, performances, pitches
Selected participants: Zentrum für politische Schönheit, 2girls1comp, Babak Ahteshamipour, total refusal, Margarete Jahrmann, David Szauder, Paul Feigelfeld, Johanna Pirker, Günther Friesinger, Christof Ressi
Game studio meet up: Subotron, Bongfish, Causa Creations, Microbird Games, Game Dev. Graz, AVbaby Virtual Studio
Organiser: Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz
Programme contacts: Martin Baasch, Marleen Leitner, Michael Schitnig
Venue: Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz, Puchstraße 41, 8020 Graz, Austria
Festival dates: June 5–14, 2026
Game culture weekend: June 13–14, 2026
Workshops: Unity für Einsteiger:innen with René Senten; Grundlagen der 2D-Game-Animation with Zafer Alhasan; Charaktere, die erzählen: Grundlagen des Character Designs with Eileen Junge
Workshop registration: workshop.hypernoma@gmail.com
Admission: Workshops are free with advance registration; other programme conditions should be checked with the venue
Presented by: Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz
RESILIENT GLITCHES / HYPERNOMA, a ten-day media art festival at Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz, places game culture inside a broader conversation about political technology, networked propaganda, platform power, and digital resistance. Running from 5 to 14 June 2026, the festival gathers artists, theorists, activists, game designers, studios, and researchers for exhibitions, performances, lectures, workshops, pitches, and experimental formats.
Deepfakes, bot politics, AI governance, billionaire futurism, and automated forms of social control have made technological culture a political field. Resilient Glitches responds through critical media art and activist practice, treating the glitch as a form of interruption rather than a mere technical error. Its programme includes figures such as Zentrum für politische Schönheit, 2girls1comp, Babak Ahteshamipour, total refusal, Margarete Jahrmann, David Szauder, Paul Feigelfeld, Johanna Pirker, Günther Friesinger, Christof Ressi, and others.
Within the festival, HYPERNOMA launches as a three-year platform project devoted to the artistic and social potentials of digital play. The name joins “Hyper” with “Noma”, suggesting a tension between acceleration and order, between systems that regulate behaviour and games that allow those systems to be tested, bent, or reimagined. The second programme weekend is especially relevant: it focuses on gaming, game culture, experimental design, and the first Game Studio Meet Up Graz / Wien.
On Saturday 13 June, the day opens at 10:00 with three free workshops requiring advance registration: Unity für Einsteiger:innen with René Senten, Grundlagen der 2D-Game-Animation with Zafer Alsheikh Hasan, and Charaktere, die erzählen: Grundlagen des Character Designs with Eileen Junge. The workshops run until 13:00 and ask participants to bring suitable equipment, depending on the session: laptop, tablet, graphic tablet, drawing software, or sketch materials. Registration is via workshop.hypernoma@gmail.com.
After lunch, the programme continues at 14:00 with Game Studio Meet Up Graz / Wien, a panel and pitch session featuring Jogi Neufeld of Subotron, Gabriele Hebart of Bongfish, Ben Wahl of Causa Creations, Regina Reisinger of Microbird Games, and Erin List of Game Dev. Graz. At 16:30, the event moves to an Open Studio Visit at AVbaby Virtual Film Studio, with a pitch by Thomas Diemling in conversation with Xiaoao Dong.
On Sunday 14 June, the closing day begins at 11:00 with an Art Brunch featuring David Szauder in conversation with Martin Baasch, alongside the book presentation Glitches and Glory. At 12:00, Laura Bruckner discusses Play! – Symphonic Game Music in Concert in an online conversation with Robin Birner for Oper Graz. At 13:00, Christof Ressi presents the sound lecture-performance Game Over. The festival closes at 15:00 with a guided curatorial tour.
Schaumbad is an apt site for this convergence of art, game culture, and political media practice. Founded in 2008 and relocated in 2013 to a former lemonade factory in Graz’s industrial district, the artist-run house contains studios, workshops, exhibition spaces, a video studio, a sound lab, and event areas. Its programme has long supported exhibitions, performances, concerts, symposia, workshops, and the monthly Art Brunch im Bad.
The festival’s strongest argument is that game culture should not become too well behaved. Once play becomes innovation rhetoric or just marketing chitchat, it enters the same administrative language that already governs AI, platforms, and creative technology. RESILIENT GLITCHES / HYPERNOMA keeps the emphasis elsewhere: on bugs, unruly users, unstable rules, local scenes, and the minor forms of disorder that still interfere with systems built to predict every gesture.