Art in the Age of Average. The new AI-thoritarians – AdBK Munich
https://generativemedia.net/event/art-in-the-age-of-average
Conference
Tue, June 3, 18–21 and Wed, June 4, 11–18
at AdBK Munich, Akademiestraße 2, Central Lecture Hall, free admission
With: Gregory Chatonsky, Simon Denny, Navine G. Dossos,
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Mat Dryhurst, Constant Dullaart, Antonio Somaini
There is a strange disconnect in tech’s recent effects on politics and culture.
While culture and art feel constrained by data populism, scandal management and market opportunism, politics is on a rampage. Nothing seems impossible, from invading or selling Greenland or Gaza, abolishing central banks or food banks, to making Nazis great again.
AI plays a role in accelerating the advent of autocratic rule. It assists in making people and social systems redundant and superfluous; it AI-washes austerity with a “scientific” sheen, it creates tornados and wildfires by burning up natural resources in data centers, it generates Aryans with six superhuman fingers to advertise for German hard right party AfD.
AI industries provide tools for populists and autocrats to proceed like old school genius artists who defy taboos, laws and regulation to perform creative destruction. Their near monopoly industries have vast leverage over workers, markets and users alike and radicalize the chasm between rich and poor. AI tools are brushes, magic wands and chainsaws in the hands of libertarian strongmen.
In light of this cooptation – or shall we say couptation? – we ask, how artists can recapture any creative initiative, or some form of artistic freedom?
How do they/we escape mid-art, the midbrow mediocrity that comes with pimped and averaged mass data tweaked by partisan AI models? How to deal with the competition by full-on futurist performance art now operationalized by tech oligarchs, bureaucrats and incel imperialists?
What kind of tools – if any – are necessary to open up different possibilities for recent technology? Avoid, transform or oppose? Stall, stake or speed up? How to do art when its traditional forms have been culturally appropriated by multipolar dilettantes?
June 3, 2025
17.30 Hito Steyerl and Francis Hunger: Introduction
18.00 Gregory Chatonsky: Vectofascism
19.00 Antonio Somaini: Politics of Latent Spaces
June 4, 2025
12.00 Navine G. Dossos: The Only Flowering Plant in the Ocean
13.00 Constant Dullaart: The hyperreal iconoclasm exploit
14.00 Simon Denny: Flight to Safety
15.00 Break
16.00 !Mediengruppe Bitnik: Unreal Data
17.00 Students of Emergent Digital Media Class: mid- life mid- art mid- journey
18.00 Mat Dryhurst: Protocol Art
Moderation: Boris Čučković, Paul Feigelfeld, Francis Hunger, Hito Steyerl
Konzept: Hito Steyerl, Francis Hunger