iMatadero MadridLegazpi
LAB 5: The Mechanics of Truth (exhibition)
A Medialab Matadero group show in Nave Una: unpublished, site-specific installations by five international artists probing how technology reshapes what counts as real.
More in Madrid
In 2023 millions briefly believed Pope Francis had stepped out in a white Balenciaga puffer. Martyna Marciniak has had the coat sewn, every glitch of the AI image reproduced in the fabric, beside a 16-minute video in which the "Pope" explains why we stopped trusting photographs.
Four new or site-specific installations fill Nave Una. You walk past a crime-lab set from a film about Russia's 1999 apartment bombings and watch it through a live camcorder's screen. Hurricane data that AI climate models failed to predict plays across a web simulation. In Oracle Index, four retired Ethereum rigs play a lottery to pick which clip reaches the LED screen. Madrid queues all autumn for Christmas lottery tickets; here the machines play for you, and the prize is the next video.
Entry is free: Tuesday to Thursday 5 to 9pm, Friday to Sunday noon to 9pm. Curator Bani Brusadin gives tours on 21 and 28 November and 13 December at 12:30pm; sign up 15 minutes early at the information desk.
Editor's pick
Martyna Marciniak has sewn the AI-generated "Balenciaga Pope" puffer as a real coat, glitches included. Elsewhere, four retired Ethereum mining rigs pick video clips by lottery. Medialab Matadero's group show tests how technology bends what counts as real.
Look for
The Balenciaga Pope's coat
Look for the white puffer from the 2023 AI image, sewn as a real garment with the generator's glitches kept and references from baroque painting to AI blobs embroidered in its lining.
The crime-lab set and its camcorder
In Terror Element, an HDV camcorder films a lab stage with an explosive-detection kit, vials and a metal tray, so you see the raw props and the camera's version side by side.
Nina's television
The 25-minute film plays on a CRT set almost identical to the one its forensic expert watches inside the film's digital lab.
Four retired mining rigs
Second-hand machines stranded when Ethereum dropped proof-of-work mining in 2022 compete in a cryptographic lottery; the winner sends its clip of a fictional Cuban archive to a large LED screen.
Hurricanes the models missed
Unpredictable Atmosphere reassembles strips of past hurricane data across a two-channel live web simulation, switching between radar, aerial, orbital and cloud layers.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Also at Matadero Madrid
On now nearby
Image credits
4
- LAB 5: The Mechanics of Truth (exhibition)Courtesy of Matadero Madrid
- De los que hicieron México su hogar: una ofrenda a la memoria del exilioCourtesy of Casa de América
- Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend 2026: Entre la retícula y la vidaCourtesy of Museo Lázaro Galdiano
- Matadero MadridAlesKubr2, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain