The 31st edition of the International Festival of Computer Art / MFRU31, entitled Esoteric Ecotechnics. Irrational Computation and Conspiratorial Networking, focuses on underground and secret connections between media technologies, users, knowledge and information circulation. The festival looks for spaces of non-compliance and resistance to the current climate of warfare and tech authoritarianism, accompanied by the ideologies of artificial intelligence and venture capital. Featured artistic positions are informed by secretive, symbolic, and peer-oriented intentions while conceiving the interplay of society, knowledge and digital technologies.

Esoteric Ecotechnics seeks ways of reacting to the recent state of global unrest, which is enabled by network technologies and massive power dynamics connecting capital and big tech, the military, and reactionary ideologies. This alliance is often grounded on a technocratic cosmology based on endlessly growing computation, nation-state and over-national institutional powers and global financial and political flows. In such a narrative of irrational computation, no space for actions is foreseen for individuals or small groups that do not want to accept the status quo, which makes even conceiving an alternative to mainstream ways of operating seem impossible. The festival counters that worldview with artistic works that operate on a small scale, utilising and creating obscure and conspiratorial symbols and aesthetics to construct – as networks of peers – new ground for socio-political imagination.

Through the deliberate creation and adoption of deceptive and conspiratorial practices and aesthetics, the festival programme explores new ground for socio-political imagination, envisioning new social alliances and resilient community networks.