Irini Papadimitriou

Irini is our Creative Director, working with the team to shape our creative and artistic vision and lead the development of curatorial themes and ideas for our programmes. From developing artistic commissions, exhibitions and critical conversations to building partnerships, collaborations and networks, Irini has been moving between Manchester, the UK and beyond!

Irini joined FutureEverything after ten years at the V&A in the role of Digital Programmes Manager, initiating and curating programmes such as the annual Digital Design Weekend festival, Digital Futures, art & design commissions, symposia and more. Her display, Artificially Intelligent, was exhibited at the V&A in 2018, confronting our complex relationships with technology and ideas surrounding AI, invisible technological infrastructures and boundaries of humanness. She was also Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans, curating the exhibitions programme and an annual Digital Performance Festival, exploring the impact of technology in culture and society from a critical perspective. Irini has been a recipient of curatorial research programmes including MOBIUS (Finnish Institute), Art Fund, Mondriaan Fonds and British Council, and she has served as a jury member for Prix Ars Electronica, Lumen Prize, Vertigo STARTS, D&AD, Share Prize and ACM Siggraph.

Irini’s curatorial practice and research draws on interdisciplinary and critical discourse to explore digital culture, our ever expanding relationships with technology, and the role of art in helping us engage with and navigate contemporary issues. She is especially interested in the areas of emerging technologies, inequalities, injustice and ethics, aesthetics of automation, AI and algorithmically driven processes, surveillance and control, and public (physical-digital) realm. Sometimes she writes about these topics too!

Outside of FutureEverything, Irini is co-founder of Maker Assembly, a critical gathering about maker culture. She is a co-curator for the Arts & Culture experience at Mozilla Festival, an Industry Advisory Group member for SODA (School of Digital Arts) at Manchester Metropolitan University, and an Advisory Board member for ONX Studio, a new major collaboration between Onassis USA and New Museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC.

She/her

Medium: https://medium.com/@irini_mirena 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinimirenapapadimitriou/ 

Twitter: @irini_mirena 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irini_mirena/