Qwen Stefani Against Techfascism engages with the growing tech-authoritarian infrastructures that condition our everyday lives by developing a contemporary handbook of resistance. The work is centred around the virtual character Qwen Stefani, a tech-savvy influencer who opposes the growing influence algorithmic decision-making has on social participation.
Qwen Stefani is a counter-part to Gwen Stefani, the 90ies pop-feminist icon turned conservative Catholic influencer. For a number of years, Gwen Stefani has been promoting the subscription-based Catholic prayer app ‘Hallow’, an app founded with investments by Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance that enmeshes the promise of spirituality within a data economy of surveillance and control. Qwen Stefani balances this with a commitment to the struggle against techfascism. She takes her name from the Chinese generative AI model Qwen.AI she was built with.
The blueprint for resistance comes from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a handbook circulated within the anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War. The manual instructs ordinary citizens on how to disrupt and undermine enemy operations in fascist occupied Europe without getting caught. The idea is to slow down work environments by misplacing tools, mistiming orders, or raising quality control to unattainable levels without raising suspicions. This same manual became the most downloaded document within U.S. government administrations following Donald Trump’s re-election in January 2025.
The multi-part installation series immerses visitors in an environment of artificial light, LED-neon signage, sound, and video works. The series consists of multi-screen works, LED-neon signs a three-part video installation and a sound work by Berlin-based sound artist Filipp Khan.
The nine instructions, inspired by the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, are displayed as bright red LED neon lettering distributed throughout the church. Each phrase is a rendition of a small act of refusal adapted for the digital age: Civil disobedience that interrupts the smooth functioning of the technologies that mediate our lives. They invite to withdraw from permanent connectivity, to allow emotions to interrupt efficiency, and to use humour to expose how deeply technologies structure our daily routines. The simplicity of these tasks however underscores a central tension: while everyday disruptions may offer moments of relief or awareness, they cannot meaningfully counter authoritarian technologies on their own. A real shift away from authoritarian technologies requires structural change, collective mobilization, and political decision-making. Qwen Stefani Simple Sabotage Manual then becomes an invitation to question the systems we inhabit and to demand the conditions for fairer, more inclusive technological infrastructures. The aim is to build connections, ignite new impulses, and open pathways toward empowerment and protest.
Fragmented across 18 screens forming a seven-meter-high video wall in the choir room, an oversized Qwen Stefani cries endlessly. The video and its staging make reference both to representations of mourning women in Christian churches and the highly emotional world of pop culture and social media. A present-day mourning Madonna, Qwen Stefani grieves the loss of personal freedoms, social participation and inclusion - or maybe she is just crying on Zoom.
Doomscroll against Techfascism #SabotageManual #AI #TechTok #Qwenstefani, 2025
3-part video installation, Full-HD. 16:9, sound, loop. 14'23", 14'14", 13'53", screens, beanbags, dimensions variable
In short videos Qwen Stefani talks about techfascism, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual and the difficulties with technological systems that are driven by data and AI. Instead of preaching in a church, Qwen Stefani preaches in her natural habitat, the digital space of social media. Divided into three chapters, Qwen Stefani's shorts appear between reels from social media accounts of artist and theorists whom we follow and appreciate online. Embedded in an ideal doomscroll of inspiring, engaging and funny reels from artists we admire, Qwen Stefani critically eximines technologies of power including the tools that helped create her.
