Pool 7: Art & Algorithmic Magic (gLV)

How do exhibition formats, displays, materialities, production methods change in the crisis of human scales? There are no figures and backgrounds anymore to orientate, anything has turned into an active subject. We seem exhausted of our distributed omnipresence, of our mediatized loops and of the promiscuity of the urge to permanently perform. Hybrid subjectivities integrate the human with other biological or technological agents. They destabilize the imagination of a human autonomy and remind us that the human is only one of many viable potentials for sensing, touching, and sensemaking.

Are our scales in crisis or does this polyphony of agencies invite us to engage in topics like collective intelligence and the plasticity of social brains? How do artistic practices react? How do they attune to the multiplicities of scales in the surround? Shall artists become molecular anthropologists (Nicolas Bourriaud) in order to renegotiate their relations and presences in these porous worldings? Can artworks bring back distance or latency (Jan Verwoert) or provide self-perpetuating silences and calming energies? Do idealistic and critical practices turn into materialistic one? Is it about a radical re-thinking of time and experiencing of temporalities that gives way to a broader and better understanding of stories, of in-betweens, even of tomorrows (Fred Moten)?

We will investigate spaces of resonance to rebuild social infrastructures and explore artworks which experiment with the production of values, enact improbable bodies between states of dreaming and wakefulness, materialize ghosts by drones, provide places for involvement in rituals, or diffract the artificial separation between brain and body.

Artists to be discussed: Adelita Husni-Bey, Agnieszka Kurant, Agnieszka Polska, Ed Atkins, Rachel Rose, Tejal Shah, Emily Wardill and others. Furthermore, we plan a visit to the exhibition “SHIFT. AI and a future community” at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart with Hito Steyerl, Philippe Parreno, Jenna Sutela, knowbotiq and others.

About the lecturer:

Christian Hübler / knowbotiq has been experimenting with forms and medialities of knowledge, political representations and epistemic disobedience. In recent projects knowbotiq is investigating and enacting inhuman geographies with the focus on algorithmic governmentalities, libidinous and affective economies and postcolonial violence.