1. September 2025 - 31. October 2025
IZOLYATSIA: Kyiv, Ukraine
About the artists
Critical Tech Group is a research unit within autonomous learning organization воркінпрогрес (https://wip.network/). For DATAS residency with IZOLYATSIA, it is represented by Nazar Golianych and Nastia Kolodka. CTG is focused on practical engagement with questions related to computation of society. Nazar is a moving-image artist and investigator for two investigative agencies - Molfar and TrapAgressor. He maintains wip.network — a space for study groups that enables independent research with community funding. Nastia Kolodka is a Ukrainian emerging researcher and visual artist. She mainly works with spatial research, interactive design, experiments with 3D modeling and creative coding. In her practice, she combines the study of rhizomatic systems, (post)internet culture and decentralised communities. Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. Nastia is a part of the creative duo Crowd Connection. Her recent engagements include participation in art labs such as Maisternia (Kyiv, 2025) and DocuSynthesis x Ukrainian War Archive (Kyiv, 2024), as well as involvement in the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (Dnipro, 2024) and Odesa Photo Days (Kyiv, 2022) programmes.
About the project
Rather than understanding the state as a machine or the state-machine, our project asks: What if the machine is the state? "Machine States" is a laboratory that simulates the future, in which the political and technical spheres are one. "Machine States" is a project by Critical Tech Group, aiming to explore the evolving nature of the state in an era dominated by planetary computation. A laboratory will be a simulated environment using mesh-networks of routers and servers, acting as "machine states." These states will run custom governance protocols and engage in simulated political competition and cooperation, fighting for resources like bandwidth and client populations. The project will experiment with variables that define how these digital "polities" adapt to competition, essentially creating a "playground" to test future scenarios of sovereignty. A film will contextualize the laboratory's findings within the broader history of sovereignty, from its Westphalian model to its current computational reality. It will integrate research, archival footage, and interviews, examining how concepts like "data colonialism" and "platform imperialism" are reshaping governance. The project is driven by the understanding that traditional territorial sovereignty is being challenged by global computational infrastructures. As private platforms increasingly take on roles historically held by nation-states, questions arise about new models of citizenship (as "usership" of infrastructure) and the ability to exercise politics in this evolving landscape. "Machine States" seeks to fuse technical and political understanding, recognizing that political forms are often manifestations of the technology that enables them. The Critical Tech Group, with its diverse expertise, sees Ukraine's advanced e-governance as a particularly relevant context for this research.
