In Person: Claudia Larcher

Two evenings, one cosmos: the Austrian Film Museum dedicates a retrospective to Viennese artist, filmmaker and AI researcher Claudia Larcher, spanning almost two decades of her work. On 1 October 2026, Claudia Larcher takes up the professorship of Post-Digital Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Starting from photography as a socially and politically effective practice, Larcher examines the transformation of the image in the digital age, from algorithmic animation to immersive, phygital installations in which the physical and the digital world merge seamlessly.

In Programme 1, From Bay to Bark, weather phenomena and non-human actors such as fungi, roots and humus become world-makers. Programme 2, From Self to Species, sees the self not as a given starting point but as an effect of images, algorithms and generations. The highlight is the world premiere of Extinction Story, in which Larcher takes her grandfather's zoological collection as the starting point for an essay on collections, ecological and cultural practices, death and (re)animation.

In the lecture performance From MTV to Future Cinema, the artist opens up the echo chamber of her images in conversation with curator Eva Fischer: references from Pipilotti Rist and VALIE EXPORT to Björk and Chris Marker meet science fiction, body horror and critical theory, an associative space of resonance between digital humanism and posthuman visual culture.

Larcher's research focuses on the materiality of data, ecological future scenarios and a bias-aware approach to artificial intelligence. The programme closes with a carte blanche: Larcher's personal invitation into her cinematic universe with Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day.

A joint event by the Austrian Film Museum and sixpackfilm, curated by Eva Fischer and Michael Loebenstein. In the presence of Claudia Larcher.