Paula Gaetano Adi’s Creative Capital project, Guanaquerx, imagines a robot that doesn’t serve conquest, extraction, or Western futurism, but instead emerges from Andean cosmologies, histories of liberation, and collective care. 

Premiering at The Ars Electronica Festival 2025, PANIC – yes/no (September 3–7 in Linz, Austria), Paula Gaetano Adi’s Guanaquerx, winner of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica 2025, is a technological enterprise and performance that re-enacts the historic Andes crossing that sparked South America’s liberation from colonial rule in the 19th century. Over the course of a seven-day journey from Argentina to Chile, the robot Guanaquerx traveled alongside artists, engineers, local baqueanos, and 58 mules and horses—reclaiming the Andes as a site of resistance and reimagining robotics as a tool for liberation.

A full-scale exploration rover, Guanaquerx was crafted after the guanaco—the native camelid of the Andes—and inspired by local mythology. In an era when AI and robotics fuel exploitation, environmental destruction, militarization and a colonialist future, Guanaquerx envisions robots as allies in the struggle for planetary restoration, reclaiming robotics as a tactic towards collective freedom and resistance.