Glitch: Ontologigal Exhaustions & System Failures

Glitch: Ontological Exhaustions & System Failures invites audiences to confront the fragility and volatility of a society increasingly governed by algorithms, surveillance, and systemic exhaustion. The exhibition explores the glitch as both aesthetic disruption and political metaphor—fractures in the system that reveal deeper truths about power, memory, and control. Through digital interventions, video works, and critical reflection, the participating artists challenge hegemonic narratives and highlight strategies of resistance, remembrance, and renewal.

Referencing the history of East German opposition as a model for subverting dominant ideologies, the exhibition frames glitch art as a powerful tool for deconstructing technocratic, repressive structures—be they neoliberal, communist, or capitalist. In this space of breakdown and reconfiguration, the glitch becomes a site of critical agency.

Nadja Verena Marcin contributes her video work Zero Gravity (2013), in which she floats weightlessly over Tampa Bay, suspended between borders, systems, and galaxies. As she drifts across the ceiling, she recites Nietzsche’s iconic words, “God is dead”—a meditation on the collapse of spiritual orientation in an era defined by consumerism and capitalist excess. The work navigates the tension between earthly gravity and the utopian impulse for absolute freedom, inviting viewers to reflect on detachment, transcendence, and resistance.

The exhibition was curated by Verena Voigt and features works by Ruth Bianco, Joana Moll, Katrin Leitner, Nadja Verena Marcin, Michael Betancourt, Ian Keaveny, and Niklas Washausen. It is on view at Spazju Kreattiv, Malta’s center for creativity.