For the third time, Deutsche Telekom and the Kunstmuseum Bonn are presenting the Human AI Art Award, which they jointly launched in 2024. The prize honors artists who work in the field of fine art and cutting-edge technology, especially artificial intelligence, and who are doing pioneering work in this field. This year’s winner is artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas.

For the 2026 Human AI Art Award, Christopher Kulendran Thomas has adapted his work Peace Core into a new spatial constellation for the Human AI Art Space: Peace Core (surround) is an immersive multi-channel video work of infinite duration that continually auto-edits American television footage first broadcast in the moments before the world-changing events of September 11, 2001.

Endlessly remixed and reedited in real-time by an AI algorithm trained on the compositional methods and editing styles of vaporwave music and early corecore videos on TikTok, Peace Core (surround) endlessly extends the last moments of an illusion of innocence before the geopolitical shifts and repercussions of 9/11 were felt across the globe including in Tamil Eelam – Kulendran Thomas’s family homeland where the Tamil independence movement was crushed by the Sri Lankan government under the pretext of the ‘War on Terror’.

For much of the past decade, Christopher Kulendran Thomas has been using artificial intelligence tools to question the myths of Western individualism. He spent his formative years in London after his family left Sri Lanka amidst escalating ethnic oppression. Using innovative technologies in his interdisciplinary practice he collaborates with architects, writers, technologists, and musicians from around the world.

The exhibition will take place in the Human AI Art Space in the outdoor area in front of the museum, which was specially designed for the prize.