MUTEK Forum 2026 announces expanded programming under…

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MUTEK Forum, a gathering for bold ideas in digital creativity, returns from August 26 to 28 for three days of radical imagination and curated exchange between artists, institutions, technology professionals, and digital experts working in music, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), ecology, media art, gaming, and design.

For the first time, the Forum unfolds across two adjoining cultural institutions in the heart of the city: Atrium et Studio-Théâtre des Grands Ballets and Édifice Wilder - Espace danse. This year’s theme, Symbiotic Frequencies, explores the dissolving boundaries between bodies, technologies, and ecosystems, offering space for overlapping networks between technology, climate, geopolitics, and art to emerge.

Through an enriching programme of lectures, keynotes, panels, workshops, and masterclasses, the Forum spotlights influential voices at the forefront of technology and cultural transformation, exploring the space where matter, meaning, and intelligence converge.

Lineup

(Artificial) Intelligence, Myth and the Non-Human

What counts as intelligence, and who gets to decide? This year’s artists and thinkers are challenging the dominant myths we’ve built around technology.

For its Canadian debut, Mindy Seu will present the acclaimed lecture A Sexual History of the Internet, offering an interactive dive into the relationships between technological development and sexuality and the origins of our digital tools. Berlin-founded media platform New Models will present Vibe-ocracy in the Psyber Age, a joint keynote contemplating frameworks for navigating a new media environment, from algorithms and propaganda to cybernetic feedback loops.

Award-winning writer and musician Claire L. Evans will explore alternative AI ecologies with her talk Brainless: How The World Thinks, inviting us to question what nature’s “brainless” minds, from slime molds to ant colonies, can teach us about the future of AI and the many shapes intelligence can take.

Story, Memory and Indigenous Futures

What becomes possible when the narratives embedded in our cultural institutions, technologies, and histories shift?

Multidisciplinary artist Caroline Monnet, of Anishinaabe and French ancestry, confronts colonialism's legacy through Anishinaabeg methodologies. At MUTEK Forum, she’ll discuss her films, uncovering what is transformed, lost, and preserved in the passage between analog and digital.

Caroline Monnet | Credit: Max Richard Tremblay

Filmmaker, activist, and curator Tracy Renée Rector will present the award-winning Encoded: Change the Story, Change the Future, reframing the narratives of North American art and history, asking which stories are told, which are missing, and how they might be reimagined.

For the first time, MUTEK Forum welcomes The Lumen Prize, the world’s leading award for art created with technology, celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, as a partner. A 2026 finalist will be featured in this year’s programme, offering a rare preview of the prize’s most exciting work before the winners are announced in November.

Sound Systems and Embodied Listening

In collaboration with Honeydrip and MORPH, a queer and femme-led collective reclaiming sound system culture and technical spaces, MUTEK Forum is presenting a dedicated track of programming exploring sound system culture and embodied sonic experience.

Oakland-based sound engineer, manufacturer, and DJ/producer Fait Poms will share insight from designing and building custom loudspeakers, centering the amplification of countercultures and marginalized voices.

A session on spatial sound and immersive audio will bring together leading voices in the field, including William Russell, co-founder and artistic director of spatial sound studio MONOM, and Dr. Lea Luka Sikau, Head Curator for Sound and Music at the ZKM Center for Art and Media.

Photo: Fait Poms

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Practice, Process and Making

For the second year in a row, MUTEK is teaming up with multidisciplinary production house DASA to host daily artist-led masterclasses with performers from the festival lineup. Among them, sound artist and instrument maker Evicshen leads a hands-on workshop on building contact microphones, introducing participants to vibration-based listening through object surfaces and guiding them in the construction of their own devices.

World Creation Studio presents a special edition of final-bounce. Hosted by multidisciplinary artist Malte Leander, the event brings together music producers and composers for shared listening and exchanges of unreleased material, demos and works in progress.

Full Forum programming will be published mid-June.

Box Office

MUTEK Forum offers several ticketing options, including the Forum Passport and the Festival + Forum Passport, along with the Student Forum Passport at a fixed price of $90 (+ service fees and taxes). Day passes will be available for purchase in June.

Passports

Partners

MUTEK would like to thank its partners, who play a key role in the maintenance and development of its activities and have provided particular support towards the production of the Forum.

The Government of Québec, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the ministère du Tourisme du Québec, the Secrétariat à la région métropolitaine du ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation du Québec, the ministère de l'Économie, de l'Innovation et de l'Énergie du Québec, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, FACTOR and Canada's private radio broadcasters, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Musicaction, Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, Ville de Montréal, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, Tourisme Montréal, Society for Arts and Technology, Hôtel Monville, Canada Media Fund (CMF), Xn Québec, Milieux Institute, The Lumen Prize, Communicating the Arts, World Creation Studio and DASA.