About Speaker
Ilona Demchenko is Programme Director of Jam Factory Art Center in Lviv, where she builds complex cultural projects in Ukraine and abroad. She has over 15 years of experience leading cultural and artistic initiatives, including heading the grant department of the House of Europe programme at the Goethe Institut and coordinating the EU funded Culture2025 initiative. Since 2022 she has produced exhibitions for PinchukArtCentre at international events such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Munich Security Conference, and in 2025 she served as producer of the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Speaker
When Conflicts Seek to Conquer Minds: Art in the Age of Propaganda, Information Manipulation and Algorithmic Realities
Framing Remarks by Sally Painter, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer Blue Star Strategies
Wars are not only fought over territories, but also over human minds and the imagination. Narratives, emotions and identities are targeted with weapons such as propaganda, information manipulation and algorithmic interference. If culture defines normality, what do freedom and cultural resilience mean for democracies when truth becomes elusive, digital algorithms shape human behaviour and trust in institutions is continuously undermined? Democracy depends on the ability to negotiate shared values and narratives, empathize with others, imagine the future, and actively shape reality rather than simply consume it. Art and culture sustain these abilities. If wars are fought over minds, is the soft power of art a cultural luxury?
Panel Session
Arts and Culture
Wednesday, 20. 5. 2026
18:00–18:50 CEST
Albright Stage
