S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK at Impakt Festival

This program, unfolding as part of the Impakt Festival, this year themed Techno Ancestrality, in Utrecht, brings together partners of the S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK program for the first time after a year and a half of interdisciplinary collaboration between continents and communities. The festival will include a Buen-TEK Assembly, artist presentations, and an award ceremony celebrating this year’s Buen-TEK Prize winners, marking the culmination of an inspiring journey into ancestral knowledge and diverse forms of local, traditional, and ecological ways of knowing. 

Bringing together ancestral knowledge systems and contemporary technological and artistic practices, the gathering reflects on how culturally grounded innovation can respond to today’s socio-environmental challenges. Rooted in the principles of Buen Vivir and Lo-TEK, and shaped through 18 months of collaboration across South America and Europe, including 10 artistic residencies, community workshops, and material experimentation, it foregrounds grassroots and community-led ways of doing, ecological awareness, and context-sensitive approaches to science and technology. By fostering dialogue across disciplines and geographies, it invites alternative models of collaboration beyond extractive frameworks, embracing reciprocity, adaptability, and collective care as conditions for more just and resilient futures.

TBA21–Academy’s engagement with Buen-TEK reflects its commitment to fostering artistic research, ecological care, and decolonial practices. As a consortium partner, TBA21 supports initiatives that bridge art, science, and Indigenous knowledge, prioritizing collaborative, place-based methodologies over extractive models. This program at Impakt Festival continues this mission, centering dialogue, adaptability, and collective inquiry as core values of cultural work.

This event is part of a series of S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK dissemination events in Europe, alongside BUEN VIVIR EN DISPUTA: Agencias vivas de los cuerpos, los territorios y las tecnologías, organized by Hacte and Barcelona Supercomputing Center, in Barcelona, and Art, Science, and Ecological Care, organized by TBA21 and SONY CSL-Rome at Ocean Space, Venice. 

With the participation of the Buen-TEK Prize winners and residency artists: Yauri Muenala & Inty Muenala, Voluspa Jarpa and El Alto Aesthetics Collective, Mari Nagem, Anthony Tandazo, Lorena Salas, Licida Vidal, Javier Blanco, Jimmy Carillo, Kinkínella, and aniara rodado, and Buen-TEK South American partners: Fabiane Morais Borges (IO-USP LACO, Brazil), Estela Santana (Pivô, Brazil), Hygor Piaget (Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil), Lorena Garcia & Elisa Arca (ATA – Alta Tecnología Andina, Peru), Karen Benalcázar (CICTA, Ecuador), Alex Correa (Platohedro, Colombia), Nataniel Álvarez (Liquenlab, Chile), ​​and Milena Godolphim & Lucas Albuquerque (Museo do Amanhã, Brazil).