Fairy tales are among the first stories we encounter in life. They often sprout from hopes for change, life’s adaptability, and the desire to improve circumstances. They invite us to explore the coherence of our existence and envision transformative possibilities.

As we transition from the fossil fuel era to sustainable energy sources, this will profoundly affect lives in the future. In this project, we speculate how this shift could transform people’s lives and human relations with their environment. To develop these ideas, we initiated two interdisciplinary working groups in Vienna and in Warsaw. This experimental format encouraged participants to step beyond their disciplines and resulted in two fairy tales. The main settings and characters have been brought to life by photo montages by Ernst Logar and a video by Kinga Kiełczyńska.

Logar’s montages interpret the fairy tales based on their content and significance levels. In Circle of Gift, the artist explores the concept of gifting in the context of the human-nature interaction. Triangle of Solarity imagines a possible future based on renewable energy sources and new forms of human cooperation. The material recycling philosophy of the table (Years to Come) is reflected in the montages, which are composed of image fragments and statements from Logar's artworks, as well as the workshop mind maps.

Kiełczyńska’s video Polarpunk reinterprets the collaboratively created fairy tale Iona as an animation generated using AI-driven, prompt-based image synthesis. The frames are interpolated to introduce motion, creating a dreamlike effect. Set against vast, icy landscapes reminiscent of The Snow Queen, the piece explores the collective aspects of technology and the ways that prompt-based image-generation tools echo the oral traditions of storytelling. Polarpunk merges ancient narrative structures with nascent visual languages.

Workshop participants

Vienna – Thomas Brandstetter (Games researcher), Christian Klösch (Historian and curator for science, space, and technology), Corto Maltese (Social anthropologist), Christine Muttonen (Politician)

Warsaw – Piotr Borkowski (Screenwriter, writer, and educator), Simone De Iacobis (Architect), Ryszard Kolasiński (Energy and environment analyst), Małgorzata Kuciewicz (Architect), Anna Rozwadowska-Rusiniak (Communications manager)

→ Ernst Logar

→ Kinga Kiełczyńska