IMPAKT has built a reputation for experimental and cross-disciplinary practices. What kinds of artistic mediums can audiences expect to encounter in this year’s festival?

Well, first of all, I need to foreground the fact that we’re approaching technology in a way that’s very different from how IMPAKT has traditionally approached technology. IMPAKT is known especially for high-tech arts-based practices. We want to move away from the idea of technology as accelerated progress, and to zoom in on local, land-based technologies used by cultures throughout history, as passed down from generation to generation. So, it’s going to be a very different kind of presentation, the exhibition as well as the discursive program, because of this. And what you can expect is a mix of what you’d expect from IMPAKT, which is new media, digital art—these things still will take centre stage. But we will also be looking at ritual as a technology. We are looking at painting, which is not, again, something that’s traditionally presented in an IMPAKT festival, but in our case, we’re looking at painting as part of a general discourse of local innovation. One of the paintings, for example, is by Marcel Pinas, whose work incorporates a form of script called Afaka, which was invented in the early 20th century in Suriname among the Surinamese Maroon communities, based on a largely oral language. And it’s the only Creole language for which an orthography was developed. So this is one of the examples of how technology enters into the artistic works we’re looking at. You can also expect to see performance that is based around things like ritual, in some cases, land-based work, depending on the artist. We have one artist working on mycelium, for example, but just overall, looking at technology from a post-human perspective.

What inspired the curatorial concept of “Techno-Ancestrality”? Were there specific artists, artworks, media practices and anthropological perspectives that played a role in shaping its development?

Well, that’s an easy question to answer because there was a whole program that came before this, called Buen-TEK, which IMPAKT has played a major role in promoting and growing. It is an EU-funded project that is based in South America. The project was specifically around Indigenous communities and artists, engaging with these communities and questioning technology from Indigenous perspectives. But to get back to your question, we came up with Techno-Ancestrality as Arjon (Dunnewind) was very keen on expanding this, moving it to a more global scope, zooming out of South America and Indigeneity. Simply because Indigenous groups have a very specific classification on a United Nations level, and we felt that it would be a bit problematic to just label all of these different kinds of local practices as Indigenous. So that’s why we shifted focus from Indigeneity, which still finds its place in the program, but we felt as though Techno-Ancestrality acted as an umbrella term that included Indigeneity, but also other forms of traditional knowledge.

Were there other themes or titles you explored?

We looked at matters of ancestral futures, which I personally didn’t like, as futurism is somewhat different from what we were interested in. You know, futurism is much more about speculative realities or, let me say, speculation in general. And I didn’t feel like this festival was really about speculative design or speculative art. I felt like this was about real-world practices that are happening now, that have been happening for aeons.

There were also versions of the title that included the term Indigenous or Indigeneity; however, that was contested, as there are many groups that are not included in the UN’s idea of Indigenous that had a place in this festival. You have land-based communities that are not living in cities, that share the same
attributes as Indigenous people elsewhere, and also have specific kinds of relationships to the state that would be different from somebody living in, let’s say, urban South Africa or Lagos.

Productively, we’re also focusing on Maroon communities. And Maroon communities, for people who don’t know, are surviving communities of formerly enslaved people, enslaved Africans. I’m from Jamaica, where we have quite a few Maroon societies. These were autonomous communities that formed during slavery, composed of runaways from the plantations. They specifically developed various kinds of land-based practices, especially in places like Jamaica; they were innovators in things like guerrilla warfare. Because they had to protect themselves, they had to locate themselves in remote areas of the island, almost impassable land. And as such, they not only developed their own kind, their own sense of sovereignty, but they won against the British, against a far more fortified and militarily sophisticated army. But the reason, and even their inclusion as Indigenous people, is fascinating because Maroon communities around the world are now several. In fact, in Suriname and in Jamaica, Maroon communities are appealing to the UN and other bodies for recognition as Indigenous people.

Are there any particular artists in this year’s program whose work you are especially excited to present?

I am very excited about Mounir Fatmi, who’s a Moroccan artist based in France. His work is really very simple, but I think it’s incredibly complex conceptually. The piece of his that we are going to show is called Dark, Dark, Dark. It’s a traditional ceramic bowl, but he paints graphical forms that represent the fluctuations of different food items on the global market. So he’s painting global economics on market fluctuations on these vases, which I think is a brilliant way that his work exemplifies the theme we’re looking at.

I am also excited to show Mohamed Abdelkarim, who is a performance artist based in Rotterdam, from Cairo. I’m very keen on getting Middle Eastern and North African representation, just because, again, we don’t typically think of these regions in these ways, in these terms. Mohamed Abdelkarim’s work is particularly interesting because he is looking at Egyptian mythology that was pre-Islamic. Everybody assumes that anything, especially if it’s a contemporary artist coming out of a place like Egypt, is going to be somehow connected to the Islamic period. But he’s interested in looking at a mythos that existed [long before Islam] and continues to exist, and is referenced in everyday traditional culture, as part of his whole performance, and approach to performance.

To name a few more, Kevin Osepa, who is a very new, exciting voice, and won the Prix de Rome 2025 for his installation ​​Lusgarda. Voluspa Jarpa, who I think is an emerging star, especially here in Europe. So I think it’s the artists who are bringing very, very new perspectives that you would never expect in a forum like this, and I’m very excited about it.

How can IMPAKT Festival 2026: Techno-Ancestrality engage with and platform cultural practitioners without reproducing extractive dynamics toward the communities or countries from which these practices emerge?

I think my very first conversation with Arjon as co-curator was precisely this. I was really concerned and even nervous about the danger of reproducing the “noble savage” trope. I felt that, firstly, it was important to respect the curatorial statement from the perspective that if we are centring Indigenous voices, there has to be Indigenous representation, even at the level of keynotes. And so I personally was quite aggressive about making sure that people, whoever we get, whether it’s the artists or speakers, that they can speak from local experience, from personal experience. And as opposed to having interlocutors, Western interlocutors come to represent Indigenous knowledge or to speak for it. So that was one of the things I think was ironed out from very early in the game. Further, I think extraction itself is so much written into this program at the discursive level as well as at the exhibition level. Many of the artworks are precisely about the extractive tendencies of capital, of imperialism and colonialism. So there’s a whole pedagogical strain to what we’re doing that is not about presenting Indigenous works in a naive way, but engaging with these cultures, and also engaging with the issues that could have made something like this very problematic in this context.

What do you hope those who attend the festival will take away?

I think one of those things is: how do we think of technology differently? How do we think of technology as something slower? First, technology is a slowly accumulating knowledge system, devices that are passed down from generation to generation, that never go out of use, ways of thinking that also question or even counteract today’s fast-paced notion of innovation and technology as being ‘whole’. I think the takeaway is that we have always had technologies that have existed on the planet that have been used and are still used every single day. In many cases, there are more ecologically sound technologies that are ignored and are not favoured by capitalism and by industrialisation.

I think the second is: how can we build more ethical relationships with one another in and through technology? How does ancestral knowledge itself amount to ethical systems, philosophical systems that bring people together in certain ways, give people a sense of responsibility over one another, as opposed to what in the West we’ve come to know as individualism? I think lots of ancestral knowledge systems are about ethics and about relating ethically with one another, being responsible for the other, being responsible for the non-human as well. We really need to also reconsider how we approach the environment, not as resources, but as active agents who live alongside us. These are the things that we foregrounded in our curation that I hope the audience can grasp.

Thank you to Akin for taking time out of his busy schedule to open up to us about the festival, his inspirations, hopes, and excitement. We look forward to seeing his vision come to life in April for the IMAPKT Festival 2026: Techno-Ancestrality.