NSFW

This week's song is here not only because it has a nice melody and rhythm, but mainly because of a hearing error: The refrain sounded (and still sounds) to me like as Ayo were singing "It's supposed to be law" which is, actually not, what she says.

I didn't find a website on her, but an Instagram account and a Wikipedia article . And a Deurtschlandfunk article.

Mishearing love/law reminds me - a lot - of Wumbaba (more on this and also the political debate on it at Wikipedia) which I read with pleasure years ago.

Retrospect

Pro Bono

Hannah and Julia published a new episode of Pro Bono. It's about the European Forum Alpbach (EFA).

ORF

The impact of the European Media Freedom Act on the upcoming decision on the new ORF-leadership is analyzed in a Standard-article, based on interviews with "the usual suspects" (Lehofer, Strobl, Ennser-Jedenastik) and me.

Society for Telemedicine

I was appointed as an external (pro bono) advisor to the Austrian Society for Telemedicine and joined my first meeting of the advisory board. One of the topics discussed (also) there was reidentification risks with patient data. This was a topic at CPDP - a huge and very nice privacy conference in Brussels - as well, thanks to a workshop organised by Selen, Rodessa, Ibrahim, Kseniia and Alexandra from the department.

Rodessa wrote a report on the session for our blog.

#arsboni

Sandra Konstatzky, head of the Gleichbehandlungsanwaltschaft (equal treatment ombudsperson) spoke about her job and the impact of digitalisation on it.

The LLP informed about the first bank account in episode 31 of "Recht neugierig".

Prospect

MRI: Call for Contributions

Anna and Katja from the department are organising 'their' conference on Media, Law and Information (MRI) again.

This year's topic: Between support and challenge: Legal measures to safeguard media quality and diversity
05 October 2026 at top floor of the Juridicum
In the afternoon of the conference, there will be in-depth workshops and they are now looking for exciting contributions that bring new perspectives, methods or practical impulses.
Submission deadline for workshops: 30 June 2026, 23:59
Submission here: https://mri.univie.ac.at/registrierung/workshop-leitende/

AI and Legal Education

On Friday, June 5th, at 16.00 CET I will discuss the impact of AI on legal education with Prof. Dr. Paulina Jo Pesch. She is coauthor of a

I will cover a similar topic on Tuesday, June 9th, at 9.00 am. Prof. Dr. Alke Martens, who as a nice Instagram channel with more than 200.000 followers learning on computer science from her, will talk about writing and acting AI.

She's written a whole open access book about the former.

Here's her first assessment of Open Claw (that is liked due to its humor).

Advanced Robotics

The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impact will take place from  June 10–12, 2026, at the TUtheSky in Vienna. The venetis hosted by TU Wien and sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society

I have the privilege to be part of a session on Wednesday afternoon.

My friends and role models Barbara Prainsack and Tatsu Inatani from Kyoto University will be part of the session as well - among others.

Look and Feel

Theater im Park

I attended a talk of Konrad Paul Liessmann and Michael Köhlmeier at Theater im Park on Sunday morning.

The venue is really beautiful and they have a very nice (mainly cabaret and music) program all summer long. The talk as such was somehow as expected, with talking points on war (in Iran), American politics, human freedom, the educational system and, of course, AI (lots of AI, actually). It would have profited a lot from interventions of a smart young person. It's, however, a remarkable achievement to bring so many people together who are willing to pay for being entertained for 90 minutes by a simple conversation.

The ticket is also valid for an entry at Unteres Belvedere so that I went there as well and profited from two exhibitions: Anni Albers, Constructing Textiles (very nice!) and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, True to Nature. The latter brought the final proof that smartphone addiction was already a thing in 1850.

Christoph Schlingensief

A friend and dear reader gave me two Schlingensief-books for my birthday and I am currently hooked by one of them.

This is a very personal story of the remaining time after his lung cancer diagnosis. It's therefore very similar, yet also very different from Wolfgang Herndorf's "Arbeit und Struktur" which was one of the books with the most impact on me that I've read last year (see Weekly 26/2025). The book exists in a hard cover mini version that you can easily carry with you in your pocket. It has two main topics: god and the disease related loss of personal autonomy and freedom.

YouTube has a 17 years old short portrait of the book and its author.

Reading the book also brought me into the running Schlingensief-exhibition at MAK, including a reconstruction of his Viennese container installation "Ausländer raus. Bitte liebt Österreich".

I am old enough to remember this and other debates triggered by Schlingensief from my personal memories so that it was very interesting - and disturbing - how pending the topics are he was stressing. I would have appreciated some contextualisation in the exhibition. Matthias Dusini wrote a (rather negative) critique in Falter (Paywall) that I share. I would, however, recommend to visit it, to see how very well he felt, understood and thematised some of today's society mega trends (voyeurism, fascism, extremism) 25 or more years ago and how much his voice is lacking today. It's quite telling that the artistic director of Wiener Festwochen, Milo Rau, made reference to this installation in a recent interview about the (canceled) Peter Thiel appearance at the Festwochen.

Have a wonderful week and take care of yourself!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)