The following spoke:
 
Dr. Katrin Vohland, Director General and Scientific Director, NHM Vienna
Gregor Sailer, photographer
 
With Cockaigne – the old French term for the land of milk and honey – the photographic artist Gregor Sailer focuses on an age-old dream of humanity: A world where food is abundant. In his visual worlds, he shows what agriculture of the future could look like and asks how we want to secure our food in the future – and at what price. Agriculture has never been pure nature. It is always designed space, characterized by human needs and ideas.
 
Gregor Sailer's photographs open the eyes to these profound changes: for engineered fields, artificial habitats and visions of a production that puts efficiency above everything else. It contrasts two systems: on the one hand, highly diverse agro-systems that require a lot of human labour, and on the other hand, AI-driven, automated agriculture with standardised organisms and processes – and the promise to do without fossil energy, unlike current industrial agriculture.
 
The often years of planning and conception precedes the search for motifs and leads Gregor Sailer again and again to places that are not or difficult to reach for many people. His images, reduced to the essentials, radiate calm at first glance and stimulate an intensive examination of highly explosive topics at second glance.
 
The special exhibition "Cockaigne. Schlaraffenland der Zukunft?" will be on display from 10 February to 19 July 2026 in Hall 21 on the 2nd floor of the NHM Vienna.

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