Robotron & Co.

The research and exhibition project “Robotron & Co.” examines the history of the tech industry in East and West Germany and reflects on how it changed over time using examples of selected works by contemporary artists. The developments in the East German industrial sector serve as the starting point of the exhibition. It highlights the historic significance of the state-owned enterprise VEB Robotron, explores how these once important industrial facilities had fallen into decay well before the end of the Cold War, and concludes with the reindustrialisation of the greater Dresden region as Germany’s “Silicon Saxony”, positioned to become the largest centre for semiconductor manufacturing in Europe.
“Robotron & Co.” investigates the importance of this region and its role in the global technology sector and presents a vision of the future. How is our relationship to work and manufacturing changing? In view of increasing automatisation, how do we feel when fewer and fewer people are involved on the production floor, and having machines produce machines? How can we even understand and help shape the realities that are being processed and algorithmically driven by machines?

In cooperation with international artists and researchers, this project aims to aesthetically explore these questions and develop five new productions which will be presented first at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig and later at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund. The exhibition will feature these new productions alongside pioneering works of the past several decades, including the poetic-conceptual “typewritings” by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, the visionary photography of Lewis Baltz from Silicon Valley and texts and works by Harun Farocki on the subject of “operative images”. In addition to a publication and an extensive accompanying programme, the organisers plan to also stage the exhibition at the Wende Museum in Culver City, California.


Artistic director: Jochen Becker / metroZones
Artists: Peter Badel / Holger Herschel, Lewis Baltz, Tina Bara, Timm Rautert, Harun Farocki, Knowbotiq Research, Luigi Nono, Ulla Wiggen, Sandra Schäfer, Allan Sekula, Tytus Szabelski-Różniak, Tobias Zielony and others

Exhibitions: Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig: 26 Sep. 2025 – 13 Feb. 2026; Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund: 13 Mar. – 13 Sep. 2026