The workshop "Fest-Forward: Governing the Smart Wall" is part of a series of experimental encounters, which reenvision curation from an act of putting things together in display towards the curatorial project in itself becoming a place of joint meaning making between artists, curators, affected communities, and the co-investigative public. In this workshop participants jointly speculate on how an exhibition could become a tool for not only commenting on but more so influencing policy making around the question of algorithmic immigration and border control.

The adaptability of festivals working in the digital creative realm makes them uniquely positioned to address these questions. This is not achieved through a false sense of "solutionism" but through shifting perceptions and generating new understandings. This session invites artists, curators, industry professionals, and the wider public to jointly imagine the changing role of the festival beyond a platform for artistic practice towards a vehicle for critical investigations of the existential questions of our time.