A project by Ivana Kralj, Austin Settle, and Ilaria Carli Pàris.

Connection Will Be Established… / Verbindung wird hergestellt… is an exhibition that plays with viewers’ expectations and their assumption of instant access to information, using digital interruption as a tool to reawaken attention, perception, and presence in the act of encountering art.

Three artistic positions raise the questions: What happens outside formalized learning systems—beyond algorithmic structures and digital control? Which qualities of learning cannot be automated? And how does our understanding of knowledge change in a time when artificial intelligence increasingly shapes our perception, decisions, and thinking habits?

The exhibition creates a physical-digital experiential space in which learning does not unfold linearly, but rather through impulses, irritations, interruptions—and ultimately, decisions.

Connection Will Be Established… / Verbindung wird hergestellt… features three international artists (painting, expanded photography, object), each occupying a distinct space within the exhibition.

In front of each artwork, a comfortable chair invites the viewer to sit, pause, and engage. Nearby, a QR code offers an invitation: “To learn more about this work, please scan.” Yet, upon scanning, the viewer is met not with information, but with a familiar message: Connection will be established… / Verbindung wird hergestellt… A spinning wheel appears, as if the internet has failed or the content refuses to load—a website that displays only this message.

In this moment of interruption, the viewer is confronted not with data, but with a choice. The expectation of immediate access to meaning is disrupted. Instead of answers, the exhibition creates space for reflection.

By reconfiguring a familiar gesture—scanning a QR code—the exhibition subtly shifts the learning process from passive reception to active perception. It invites the observer to slow down, look inward, and re-evaluate how meaning is formed when digital systems fall silent.