FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Vienna, Septmber 11th, 2026 — The Council for Interdisciplinary Research and Applied Science (CIRAS) today announced that Krista Kim, the artist and founder of the Techism movement, has joined CIRAS as a Fellow. Kim will work with Katarzyna Jelenska, Secretary General of the CIRAS Institute and Director of the CIRAS Center for Arts, and with Marcel Donges, IT Systems Architect in the CIRAS Directorate for Digital Infrastructure. Jelenska, who works artistically as Caina Cadie, is also one of the founders of One Light, a global initiative connecting art, awareness and positive action. Together they will bring art, AI, digital identity and human consciousness into the CIRAS Sovereign Human Economy program.
For more than a decade, Kim has explored how technology can serve human wellbeing instead of wearing it down. Her Techism Manifesto (2014) called for technology designed around human consciousness, a principle now at the center of the global debate on AI. She is a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader and one of UNESCO’s “50 Minds for the Next 50.” Her work is in the permanent collection of LACMA, and she is a commissioned artist for NEXT by Julius Baer and Sphere Las Vegas. It has been shown at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in Times Square, at Art Basel, Palazzo Strozzi, the Triennale di Milano and MOCO Museum London and Barcelona. Her Mars House, the world’s first NFT digital home, is one of 21 houses featured in The Manifesto House (Yale University Press, 2025).
Kim’s central contribution is HeartSpace, a biometric AI artwork first shown at Art Dubai in 2024, in which each participant’s heartbeat becomes living light in real time. More than 200,000 people on five continents have experienced it. HeartSpace treats the heartbeat as sovereign: an intimate signal that belongs to the person and is shared only in the moment.
For CIRAS, the work raises a question that AI is making urgent. Faces can be generated, voices cloned and video faked. How can technology recognize that a real human is present, and keep that human in control, without taking possession of their most intimate data? Kim’s work offers a guiding principle for CIRAS research on human presence and privacy-preserving identity: verify the human without owning the human.
“Every advance in artificial intelligence makes the human being more precious, not less,” said Kim. “HeartSpace began with a single heartbeat and a simple belief: our presence is sovereign. At CIRAS, I want to carry that belief from the gallery into the systems that will shape how we live, create and govern ourselves.”
With Jelenska, Kim will connect artists, museums and cultural institutions with CIRAS research. Jelenska’s work at the CIRAS Center for Arts combines visual art, strategic communication, international project leadership and photography, with a focus on the role of artistic expression in social transformation, intercultural dialogue and systemic change. Her work connects the arts with questions including identity, peacebuilding, ecological resilience and collective memory.
Kim will also connect artists and cultural institutions with One Light, CIRAS’s living laboratory for the Sovereign Human Economy, so that artists help design the technological and economic systems that will shape their future instead of simply receiving them. Jelenska, working under her artistic identity Caina Cadie, is one of the founders of One Light and has played a central role in developing its artistic and social vision. Begun in 2023, One Light uses art, advocacy and philanthropy to connect individual human action with wider humanitarian, environmental, scientific and social change. Its guiding idea — that every person can be a light for another — brings together initiatives addressing humanitarian needs, oceans and the environment, animal welfare, science and youth through sport.
Kim also brings an established collaboration with Donges, the system architect behind Web4x and the former CTO of Huawei Europe. The two have worked together on human sovereignty and human-centered technology, and they co-presented the keynote “Human Sovereignty in the Age of AI” at Toronto Tech Week 2026. At CIRAS, they will carry that shared work into the Sovereign Human Economy program.
“The more powerful artificial intelligence becomes, the more important human sovereignty becomes,” said Lothar Hartmann, Secretary General (interim) CIRAS. “Krista Kim brings exactly what this work needs: an artist’s understanding of human experience and more than a decade of leadership where culture meets technology.”
About Krista Kim
Krista Kim is a contemporary artist, a CIRAS Fellow and the founder of the Techism movement. She launched the movement in 2014 with her Techism Manifesto, which argues that technology should serve human consciousness and wellbeing. She is a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader and one of UNESCO’s “50 Minds for the Next 50.” Her practice spans immersive digital art, biometric AI installations and conscious architecture. Her major works include Mars House, Continuum (Times Square’s Midnight Moment; World Economic Forum, Davos) and HeartSpace. Her work is in the permanent collection of LACMA, and she is a commissioned artist for NEXT by Julius Baer and Sphere Las Vegas. She is the author of Human Sovereignty in the Age of AI. Her honors include the Créateurs Design Awards for Excellence in Digital Art (2024 and 2025) and the Infinity Festival Digital Arts Monolith Award (2025).
About Katarzyna Jelenska (Caina Cadie)
Katarzyna Jelenska is Secretary General of the CIRAS Institute and Director of the CIRAS Center for Arts. An artist and photographer working under the name Caina Cadie, she combines creative practice with strategic communication and international project leadership. At CIRAS, she promotes artistic expression as a catalyst for social transformation, intercultural dialogue and systemic change, with work addressing identity, peacebuilding, ecological resilience and collective memory. She develops interdisciplinary connections between the arts and fields including media, education, governance and human consciousness.
Jelenska is also one of the founders of One Light, which began in 2023 and has developed as a global initiative connecting art, advocacy and positive action. Through Caina Cadie, she uses art and visual storytelling to bring attention to humanitarian, environmental and societal challenges and to turn awareness into participation. One Light’s initiatives span humanitarian support, ocean and environmental protection, animal welfare, science and youth through sport, united by the principle that every person can become a light for another.
About Marcel Donges
Marcel Donges is IT Systems Architect in the CIRAS Directorate for Digital Infrastructure and the system architect behind Web4x, which he began developing in 2005 and introduced in 2017. He is the former CTO of Huawei Europe. As Chief Architect for Smart Cities and IoT in Stuttgart, he grew that initiative to about $1 billion in annual revenue. He co-founded Cerulean Circle and has led major digital initiatives with Deutsche Bahn, DHL and the European Space Agency.
About CIRAS
Founded in 2025, the Council for Interdisciplinary Research and Applied Science (CIRAS) (IIGO Initiative) and the interdisciplinary CIRAS institute anchored in Vienna and connected globally. Its twelve specialized centers link research, applied science and system design across science, technology, infrastructure, health, the arts, governance and social development. Its Sovereign Human Economy program explores human identity, human presence, creator rights, human-controlled AI and new economic structures that keep people at the center of technological progress. www.ciras.org
Media contact
Martina Hautau, Director of Media, CIRAS
