Australian AI scholar wins Silver Lion in Venice

An Australian artist and researcher has been awarded the Silver Lion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Alongside fellow academic Vladan Joler, Kate Crawford received the prestigious prize for a large-scale visual manifesto installation that explores the relationship between technology and power across the past five centuries.

Spanning more than 24 metres long and 3 metres high, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500 "charts a global history of control - from colonial expansion and militarisation to automation and artificial intelligence - revealing how the legacies of empire continue to shape today's digital infrastructures," a release from the artists reads.

"The work begins in the year 1500, tracing how global trade routes, scientific instruments and systems of classification enabled the rise of European imperial power. These systems - cataloguing, extraction and enclosure - laid the groundwork for the concentrated power and technological structures that define the twenty-first century," the communique adds.

The work's authors have eschewed a linear history, instead presenting their research in what they described as a "visual tapestry: a richly detailed, multi-layered map that invites audiences to see the present through the lens of the past." Thousands of hand-drawn illustrations and original texts are woven into the work, which was created over five years.

The installation was unveiled at the opening weekend in the Venice Arsenale, having initially debuted at Milan's Fondazione Prada in 2023. Prior to the work's exhibition in the biennale, it had been adapted into site-specific presentations at various global institutions, including KW Institute, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Kunsthalle Wien, Mori Art Museum and Jeu de Paume.

Reflecting on the work's current presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Crawford noted, "It's very fitting to show this work in the historic Arsenale, once a military factory and a site of early mass production to build galleys. This latest iteration of Calculating Empires was adapted specifically to reflect Venetian history and it invites audiences to explore how the infrastructures of empire endure within today's technological systems. The project reveals how technological power is never neutral, but always entangled with political, economic, and environmental forces."

Chief executive of presentation partner Powerhouse Sydney Lisa Havilah said, "Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler's work challenged how we understand technology's role in shaping the world. It exemplifies the critical, cross-disciplinary practice Powerhouse supports."

The Sydney institution will exhibit a version of Calculating Empires as part of an international tour. Dates are yet to be announced.