We scroll. We swipe. We follow directions on a digital map. We pause, like, share, and move on.
Many daily movements are increasingly shaped by apps, social media platforms and other digital systems. They guide us how to navigate, connect with others, and spend our free time. Notifications, feeds and algorithms determine what we see and how we respond. Over time, this shaped new patterns in our behavior: when we check our phones, what catches our attention, what we click on, and how long we stay online. Our routines, both online and offline, are now deeply influenced by these digital systems.
But what happens when even pleasure becomes a performance? When does relaxation become a new form of labour?
This edition of HEDEN, curated by Teodóra Róka, explores how digital systems shape the way we move, connect, and experience the world.
The evening opens with a lecture by media theorist Geert Lovink. He reflects on technological sadness – the feeling of emptiness caused by digital systems – and the loops in which we keep scrolling online. He asks: what makes us come back – and could we move differently within these systems?
Artists Toni Brell, Sarah Friend, and Lotte Louise de Jong present artworks that respond to these digital rhythms, exploring attention, desire, and the ways we get stuck or find new modes of engagement, both online and offline .
During the evening dopamine is posed as a lens that shapes how we experience pleasure, attention, and reward. How do we move within or against these systems – and what kinds of stimuli, pleasure and means to connect do we allow ourselves along the way?
By bringing together art, theory, and our everyday digital experiences, the event invites us to rethink our digital behaviour and imagine how our relationship with the digital world might evolve.
After the lecture, artists – Toni Brell, Sarah Friend, and Lotte Louise de Jong – present artworks that explore stimulation, identity, control, and the promise of reward in the digital world. Their art moves between online and offline spaces, reflecting on how we interact, communicate, and experience both domains of our lives. By connecting with their work together, we reflect on existing and possible rhythms of contemporary life.
The evening invites you to step out of the scroll for an evening and reflect on the systems that shape our attention.
HEDEN x Dopamine starts at 19:30 and ends at 22:00. After the event, the artworks will remain on display for two more weeks, until 18th of April.
We hope to see you there!
The event is free, but please sign up below.
About the artists
Toni Brell
In Eight and a Half Gestures, Toni Brell presents an installation of instruments and everyday objects that seem ready for a concert, yet are never played. A horn hangs tethered in space, other elements await action but remain still. With this work, Brell reveals how traditions, such as horn playing, are connected to ideas about power, identity, and belonging. By letting go of these fixed meanings, an open space is created in which differences and alternative ways of listening take center stage.
Sarah Friend
These works explore the artist’s likeness as a site of desire, negotiation, and projection. The dakimakura come from Prompt Baby, a series where collectors submit prompts to generate AI images of the artist; featuring prompts from collectors who later resold their editions before the images were made. Printed as anime-style body pillows, they highlight fantasies of ownership and identification. Untitled (2023) shows a fictional social media profile sharing the artist’s likeness, reflecting on bodies in cyberspace, reproduction, and the limits of generative AI.
Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler Berlin/Cologne/Meseberg
Lotte Louise de Jong
In Stuck? Click here (2025), Lotte Louise de Jong shows how easily we get stuck in the online world of endless scrolling and clicking. Using images resembling old internet pop-ups and seductive clickbait, she reveals how digital systems keep us clicking, pretending there’s a way out. But each “exit” turns out to be just another round in the same cycle. The work makes tangible how we sometimes voluntarily remain stuck, even when we know we’re stuck.
Supported by Gemeente Leeuwarden, Provinsje Fryslân, Mondriaan Fonds & Vriendenloterij Fonds.
