VIENNA.- In the mixed-media installation Soft Image, Brittle Grounds, research-led artist and filmmaker Felix Lenz exposes the material and political implications of technological image- and knowledge production, revealing how the complexity of the world collides with the reductive rationalities of the digital age.

At the intersection of art, design, and film, the installation unfolds as a spatial and audiovisual experience, prompting reflection on the layered entanglements of technology, ecology, power, and inequality.

The 30-minute essay film Brute Force [Exhibition Cut] (2025) traces the infrastructures and instruments that capture and process images and data— from subatomic particles to planetary-scale imaging—revealing their environmental impact and geological imprints. Filmed across multiple countries, including key scenes at the salt lakes and salt deserts of Utah and California, the film approaches salt as an archive of the absence of water—as a material index of climate calamity, resource depletion, and their unequal distribution. Brute Force was co-directed by Ganaël Dumreicher.

The newly developed three-channel video installation Valley of the Heart’s Delight (2025) performs a shift from the planetary to the local and situated. The title references the historical name of today’s Silicon Valley, which was once fertile land. Captured through the lens of an industrial robotic arm, layers of soil and crushed white shells evoke the sacred shellmounds of the Indigenous Ohlone people: Burial grounds and remnants of ancestral life that now lie hidden beneath corporate headquarters. Behind the smooth façades of technocratic ideologies, the installation reveals the ongoing erasure of marginalized voices and cultures.

An interview conducted by Felix Lenz with Gregg Castro, Cultural Director of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, provides additional context on the colonial history and ongoing transformation of what is now known as Silicon Valley, the ancestral land of his people.

With Soft Image, Brittle Grounds, Felix Lenz represented Austria at the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition, commissioned by the MAK and funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport. Entitled Inequalities, this Triennale focused on the growing social, economic, and ecological disparities which are further aggravated by the climate crisis and rapid technological developments.

The exhibition is the MAK’s contribution to the 2026 Klima Biennale Wien.

Vienna-based research-led artist and filmmaker Felix Lenz (felixlenz.at) explores geopolitical, ecological, and technological themes through interdisciplinary installations, films, and artistic strategies.

Their work has been shown internationally, including the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale, London Design Biennale, Istanbul Design Biennale, Ars Electronica Festival, Digital Art Festival Zurich, Biennale Warszawa and the Vienna International Film Festival. In 2024, they received the Outstanding Artist Award of the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Culture.

They have held lectures and workshops at the Royal College of Art London, University of British Columbia, Humboldt University Berlin and Universidad de Buenos Aires. They are a graduate of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Design Investigations, Prof. Anab Jain) and currently teach at MA Information Design, Design Academy Eindhoven.