TECHNO WORLDS arrives in Shanghai for final chapter of five-year global exhibition project

_{18 May 2026}

Exhibition examining techno’s global cultural impact remains on view at Power Station of Art until June 28

TECHNO WORLDS is running at Shangai's Power Station of Art, marking the final stop of a five-year international touring exhibition initiated by Goethe-Institut that examines techno’s cultural, artistic and technological impact across global contexts.

Curated by Mathilde Weh, Justin Hoffmann, Creamcake and Sensend, the exhibition approaches techno not solely as a musical genre, but as a wider cultural framework shaped by identity, media, architecture, technology and social transformation. Since launching in 2021, the project has travelled through cities including Mexico City, Kolkata, Montreal and Beijing before arriving in Shanghai for its concluding chapter.

In its Shanghai iteration, TECHNO WORLDS enters into dialogue with Chinese artists and local cultural contexts, extending conversations around techno’s relationship with urbanism, historical memory and digital culture. Bringing together 23 groups of works spanning different temporal and geographical perspectives, the exhibition traces connections between Detroit’s post-industrial landscapes, Berlin’s urban transformation, Afrofuturist thought and histories connected to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Participating artists include Aleksandra Domanović, ayrtbh, Benjamin Bacon & Vivian Xu, Carsten Nicolai, Chicks on Speed, Daniel Pflumm, DeForrest Brown, Jr. & AbuQadim Haqq, Henrike Naumann & Bastian Hagedorn, Jeremy Shaw, Kerstin Greiner, Mamba Negra, Maryam Jafri, Rangoato Hlasane, Robert Lippok, Ryōji Ikeda, Sarah Schönfeld, The Otolith Group, Tobias Zielony, Tony Cokes, UFO Media Lab, Adel-Jing Wang, Zhang Ding and Zuzanna Czebatul.

Exhibition design for the Shanghai edition has been developed by Wu Juehui and Liang Xiaoming.

Rather than presenting techno through a purely club-oriented lens, the exhibition positions the culture as an evolving ecosystem intersecting with contemporary art, media technologies and shifting forms of collective experience. TECHNO WORLDS remains on view at Power Station of Art until June 28.

Explore more about TECHNO WORLDS' Shanghai presentation here.