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Tactics&Practice [podcast]

Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana

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24 episodes
Avg 45 min
English

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S6 · E4
September 8 · 1 hr 12 min
S6 [Becoming Image] E4: Darker Patterns [w/Ben Grosser]
What infrastructures shape what we’re allowed to do, see, or become? From Technical to Hot to Operational, what are the political ontologies of the contemporary image and how might we rethink interfacing with interfaces? In this episode, artist Ben Grosser traces his background and early interest in computer music and scientific imaging, as well as early experiments in destabilising software assumptions. He explains his Demetricator works, browser extensions that hide visible social-media metrics to reveal how likes and counts condition users, and argues that platforms are designed for growth and compulsion. We talk through his “Praise-Prompt Envelope” theory, the dynamics of chatbot validation to shifting forms of literacy in the age of AI-generated text and dark patterns, and how platform interfaces engineer desire, culture and behaviour through the logic of engagement. RELATED LINKS Ben’s 2009 self-portrait from the Flexible Pixels project Demetricator works: Twitter Demetricator, Facebook Demetricator, Instagram Demetricator Reading the Praise/Prompt Machine: An Interface Criticism Approach to ChatGPT by Ben Grosser and Søren Bro Pold Douglas Rushkoff’s book Present Shock Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman’s book Investigative Aesthetics Lux Affirma prototype here Safebook The Endless Doomscroller Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman B. F. Skinner’s idea of operant conditioning, was first introduced in a 1937 journal article, and fully formalised it in his landmark 1938 book, The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis Stuck in the Scroll Not For You Francois Bonnet’s book, After Death COLOPHON Host: Rebecca Edwards Guest: Ben Grosser Recording: Rebecca Edwards Music: Gašper Torkar Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar Becoming Image podcast series Curated by: Rebecca Edwards Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026 Part of: tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image Curated by Marco De Mutiis Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E4: Darker Patterns [w/Ben Grosser] appeared first on Aksioma.
S6 · E3
September 8 · 1 hr 5 min
S6 [Becoming Image] E3: Ready Player None [w/Milia Xin Bi]
What does it mean to imagine alternatives to prescripted narratives when AI has already prescribed the rules of the world? How to navigate prescriptive AI systems to prototype other worlds, other rules, and other ways of playing within algorithmic constraint? In this episode, curator and writer Milia Xin Bi discusses how board games and tabletop RPGs shape her practice exploring media art, emerging technologies, and games, contrasting their improvisational “in-between” play with the predesigned possibilities of video games. We talk about her recent exhibition at FACT “Can Meeple Escape Neophoria?”, as well as AI and hybrid agency, glitches and gaps as sites of play, the gallery as a space to preserve friction against technology’s drive to collapse distance, and what modding and speedrunning can tell us about alternative tech futures. Cat-fu gets an honourable mention too. RELATED LINKS https://miliaxinbi.xyz/ https://www.instagram.com/miliabbb/ Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Carcassonne game Jan Zuiderveld’s coffee machine as part of Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Donald Winnicott’s concept of potential space originates from his book Playing and Reality Joseph Wilk’s Crip Ship as part of Can Meeple Escape The Neurophoria exhibition at FACT Gilles Deleuze introduced the term dividual in his 1990 essay Postscript on the Societies of Control Karen Hao’s talk at Manchester Business School Sam Lavigne’s SlowLLM browser McKenzie Wark Gamer Theory K Allado-McDowell’s concept of Neural Media Katherine N. Hayles’ idea of an integrated cognitive framework originates in her book Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts Cat-fu video examples: here, and here QQ by Tencent Y7 Undead Internet Theory talk and screening at ESEA Ivan Seal’s exhibition Your Guests Never Mention Me at Alma Pearl as part of The Black Lights Festival in Blackpool TeleAI (The Institute of Artificial Intelligence of China Telecom) COLOPHON Host: Rebecca Edwards Guest: Milia Xin Bi Recording: Rebecca Edwards Music: Gašper Torkar Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar Becoming Image podcast series Curated by: Rebecca Edwards Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026 Part of: tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image Curated by Marco De Mutiis Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E3: Ready Player None [w/Milia Xin Bi] appeared first on Aksioma.
S6 · E2
September 8 · 51 min
S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy]
What does thinking or imaging look like when it’s optimised for scroll, repetition, and affect? When thinking itself becomes “scrollified” how do repetition, optimisation, and affect rewire imagination, compress attention, and turn imaging itself into something endlessly refreshed, looped, and platform-shaped? In this episode, London-based British-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Dian Joy discusses their research-driven practice exploring subjectivity in the age of networked media and how images circulate and shape identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on film theory and Alexander Galloway’s ideas about the cinematic encounter, we ask what changes when images shift from singular cinematic events to an ambient algorithmic barrage. We discuss the research underpinning Dian’s new film work, Krumville, including a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation algorithm) trained on screenshots from her social media feeds, and years of diarised, affective experiences that are reconfigured into a fictional town structured by hyperlink logic and the condensed language of short-form media. The conversation explores AI as a tool for rendering implicit cultural patterns and biases visible at scale, while interrogating authorship, virality and the changing conditions of media literacy in an age of dual-screen attention. RELATED LINKS https://dianjoy.me https://www.instagram.com/dian__joy The Hoping Mechanism Krumville premiering at AND Festival 2026 Alexander Galloway: Interface Effect Gilbert Simondon’s idea of the pre-individual is developed primarily in his major work Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique / L’individuation psychique et collective) José Esteban Muñoz defined unconscious futurity in his book Cruising Utopia as a collective, not-yet-conscious realm of potentiality. Günther Anders’s Promethean Shame is written about in an article titled Günther Anders’s “Promethean Shame”: Technological Ressentiment and Surveillance Carly Busta’s essay Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content Jenna Bliss’s work True Entertainment in the group exhibition Genuine Fake Premium Economy at the ICA COLOPHON Host: Rebecca Edwards Guest: Dian Joy Recording: Rebecca Edwards Music: Gašper Torkar Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar Becoming Image podcast series Curated by: Rebecca Edwards Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026 Part of: tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image Curated by Marco De Mutiis Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy] appeared first on Aksioma.
S6 · E1
September 8 · 1 hr 3 min
S6 [Becoming Image] E1: Who’s Still Here? [w/dmstfctn]
Who are we when our identities are shaped through interfaces, datasets, and platforms? And what does it mean to see, to be seen, or to become visible when every act of seeing is mediated by software? dmstfctn (Francesco Tacchini and Oliver Smith) join the podcast to discuss their decade-long collaboration exploring simulation, fiction and the hidden systems that shape contemporary digital life. Focusing on their “God Mode” trilogy and the latest artwork Big Things Coming (2026) at Chemist, London from July this year, the conversation traces a world of AI reward hacking, synthetic training data and algorithmic misbehaviour through simulated supermarkets, theatrical game engines and self-playing videogames. From image-caption datasets and the Waluigi effect to data labour, optimisation metrics and the limits of language, the episode examines how machine learning systems not only represent the world but actively reshape it. Along the way, we discuss embodiment and consciousness through the work of N. Katherine Hayles, systemic realism, the aesthetics of lossy digital environments, and why leaving language behind for something like dance might offer a way out of computational logic. RELATED LINKS https://dmstfctn.net https://www.instagram.com/dmstfctn GOD MODE: Episode 3: Big things coming Waluigi’s Purgatory Sad Luigi game Ennuigi 1.0 by Josh Millard. Thanks to Petra Szemán for the link up! N.B in the episode I say the game is based on a sad Waluigi, but it’s actually based on a sad Luigi. COCO dataset Grim Fandango game The paper Depressive Realism: Four Theoretical Perspectives was published in 1988 by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson in the book Cognitive Processes in Depression published by Guilford Press on May 27, 1988. Quake III Arena bot COLOPHON Host: Rebecca Edwards Guest: dmstfctn Recording: Rebecca Edwards Music: Gašper Torkar Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar Becoming Image podcast series Curated by: Rebecca Edwards Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026 Part of: tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image Curated by Marco De Mutiis Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E1: Who’s Still Here? [w/dmstfctn] appeared first on Aksioma.
S5 · E5
Sep 1, 2025 · 51 min
S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E5: Silence in the Dark Forest [w/Bogna Konior]
What if the universe is silent not because it’s empty, but because intelligence knows when to hide? Writer and theorist Bogna Konior traces a forgotten genealogy linking early internet pioneers, ufology, and AI research to argue that the web functions as a site of first contact with inhuman cognition. Drawing on Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest Theory, she reframes communication as predation: every signal might risk exposure, every utterance (no matter how critical) might feed and stabilize future intelligence. Confronting the determinism and violence embedded in life on- and offline, Konior offers not escape, but the strange solace found in facing the world as it is. RELATED LINKS Bogna Konior https://www.bognamk.com The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (Politi, 2025) https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet–9781509569250 [The LLM Brainrot article mentioned in this episode] LLMs Can Get ‘Brain Rot’! COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Bogna Konior Recording: Neja Berger Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja Berger Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of: tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update? Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E5: Silence in the Dark Forest [w/Bogna Konior] appeared first on Aksioma.
S5 · E4
Aug 29, 2025 · 57 min
S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E4: Revolution in the Minor Key [w/Carolyn Pedwell]
In a time of live-streamed genocide, it has truly never been more clear that witnessing suffering will not automatically trigger social transformation. If the answer is not in shocking jolts and major ruptures, what power might lie in the minor key? Professor and author Carolyn Pedwell weaves pragmatist philosophy, affect theory and contemporary social movements to reveal how “affective inhabitation”, subtle tendencies and collective habits accrue power, shaping new infrastructures of care, possibility, and resistance. RELATED LINKS Carolyn Pedwell, Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation (McGill-Queens University Press, 2021) https://www.mqup.ca/revolutionary-routines-products-9780228006220.php Carolyn Pedwell and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), Affect Theory Reader 2 (Duke University Press, 2023) https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-affect-theory-reader-2 E.K. Sedgewick, Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think this Essay Is About You https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Critique/sedgwick-paranoid-reading.pdf Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture (Duke University Press, 2016)https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-minor-gesture Lauren Berlant Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press, 2013) https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Carolyn Pedwell Recording: Neja Berger Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja Berger Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of: tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update? Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E4: Revolution in the Minor Key [w/Carolyn Pedwell] appeared first on Aksioma.
S5 · E3
Aug 29, 2025 · 39 min
S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E3: Hexing the Algorithm [w/Shaka McGlotten]
What if seduction—not dissection—could fracture algorithmic control? Artist, researcher and author Shaka McGlotten guides us through witchy warfare against quantification, deploying computational hexes, opacity, fugitivity and improvisational sabotage. Having given up on dialectics and excavation, we embrace surface-level dissociation, shifting from exit to error, from critique to conjure. We may not be able to escape the machine, but could yet seduce it off-script. RELATED LINKS Shaka McGlotten, Black Data https://www.academia.edu/16303256/Black_Data Shaka McGlotten, Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality (Suny Press, 2013): https://sunypress.edu/Books/V/Virtual-Intimacies Shaka McGlotten, Dragging, Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2022): https://www.routledge.com/Dragging-Or-in-the-Drag-of-a-Queer-Life/McGlotten/p/book/9780367439521 COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Shaka McGlotten Recording: Neja Berger Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja Berger Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of: tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update? Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E3: Hexing the Algorithm [w/Shaka McGlotten] appeared first on Aksioma.
S5 · E2
Aug 29, 2025 · length unknown
S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E2: The Girl’s Inhuman Arsenal [w/Alex Quicho]
Forget Boy-Philosophy: here, we know that surfaces are sites of power and lambs are fluent in the noise of the world. But where is the difference between poetry and theory? In this episode, theorist and artist Alex Quicho dissects her concept of the Girl – a tripartite technology of subjectivity weaving the symbolic, the consumer and the inhuman – to offer a roadmap for navigating *planetary computation* (take a shot) through strategic inhabitation. If the predator overlooks the noise, what might we build in its blind spots? RELATED LINKS Alex Quicho https://amfq.xyz Alex Quicho, girlstack https://girlstack.substack.com/ Girl Intelligence (Aksioma, 2025) https://aksioma.org/girl-intelligence Noura Tafeche, Alex Quicho, She’s Evil, Most Definitively Subliminal https://aksioma.org/ayasu/conference/shes-evil-most-definitively-subliminal Alex Quicho, Everyone Is A Girl Online https://www.wired.com/story/girls-online-culture/ Alex Quicho, The Gore Layer: https://spikeartmagazine.com/articles/discourse-the-gore-layer-alex-quicho Alex Quicho, Small Gods (Zero Books, 2021): https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/small-gods Alex Quicho, GIRLSTACK, BODYSTACK Summit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgZvs56WxXU Alex Quicho, Prey Mode, BODYSTACKED Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4hwM4ljoh4 COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Alex Quicho Recording: Neja Berger Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja Berger Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of: tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update? Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E2: The Girl’s Inhuman Arsenal [w/Alex Quicho] appeared first on Aksioma.
S5 · E1
Aug 29, 2025 · 51 min
S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E1: Memes as Sympoietic Agents [w/Sophie Publig]
Is there a way to define memes without implicitly memifying everything? We move through the definitional morass of memetics and meme studies towards researcher Sophie Publig’s critical posthumanist account of memes as sympoietic agents. From in-group jokes and troll hoaxes on early image-boards to Tiktok and the GameStop short squeeze, memes’ accelerated lifespans end up leading us to the esoteric mashups and angelcore aesthetics of NetSpi and the peer-review saga of translating “the girls who get it” for academia. RELATED LINKS Sophie Publig https://publig-enemy.neocities.org Sophie Publig, Bestiarum Memeticum https://2024.xcoax.org/pdf/publig.pdf Sophie Publig, The Sympoietic Life of Internet Memes https://phaidra.bibliothek.uni-ak.ac.at/detail/o:72153?SID=29445&actPage=1&type=listview&sortfield=uw.general.title,SCORE&sortreverse=0 Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme (The Institute of Network Cultures, 2024) https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/critical-meme-reader-iii-breaking-the-meme Neja Berger, (un)real data – real effects https://aksioma.org/podcast/unreal-data COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Sophie Publig Recording: Neja Berger Music and audio mix: Gašper Torkar Editing: Neja Berger, Janez Fakin Janša Are You a Software Update? podcast series Curated by: Neja Berger Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2025 Part of: tactics&practice#16: Are You a Software Update? Curated by Nora O’ Murchú, Socrates Stamatatos, Janez Fakin Janša, Neja Berger Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S5 [Are You A Software Update?] E1: Memes as Sympoietic Agents [w/Sophie Publig] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E10
Aug 28, 2024 · 32 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E10: What Are the Limits of Interspecies Communication? [w/ Maja Smrekar]
We have lived alongside dogs for thousands of years. How close have we grown to each other since we first domesticated them? In one of her performances, artist Maja Smrekar biologically manipulated her body so that she could use her own breast milk to feed an Icelandic Spitz puppy. Behind its spectacular and, for some, controversial guises, Smrekar’s exploration of transpecies motherhood probed uncomfortable issues such as the instrumentalisation of female bodies, the problematic position of the human species at the top and centre of ecosystems, the ambiguities of biotechnological promises and the prospect of a post-human world. RELATED LINKS Maja Smrekar https://www.majasmrekar.org Hybrid Family https://www.majasmrekar.org/k-9topology-hybrid-family Miha Godec https://godec.art Gjino Šutić https://mtflabs.net/gjino-sutic Thomas Feuerstein https://www.thomasfeuerstein.net Richard Pell https://postnatural.org/rich-pell Paul Vanouse https://www.paulvanouse.com Adam Zaretsky https://inarts.eu/en/lab/staff/zaretsky Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts https://tcaproject.net Yann Marussich https://www.yannmarussich.ch/home.php Eduardo Kac https://www.ekac.org Steve Kurtz http://critical-art.net The documentary My Octopus Teacher (2020) by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Maja Smrekar Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E10: What Are the Limits of Interspecies Communication? [w/ Maja Smrekar] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E9
Aug 28, 2024 · 40 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E9: When an AI Governs Your City [w/ Pinar Yoldas]
Smart cities across the world are pioneering chatbots, autonomous vehicles and AI technologies to help streamline bureaucratic services, facilitate police recruitment, fill in potholes or locate resources at the library. Could algorithmic systems of control and governance be applied to all public services? Could an ultra-efficient AI kitten centralise and impersonate all the services, authorities and regulations that make a large city function? Artist, designer and academic Pinar Yoldas believes this is a plausible and perhaps desirable scenario. Why wouldn’t a loving and cute robot be better at running the lives of citizens than human high-ranking officials? RELATED LINKS Pinar Yoldas https://www.pinaryoldas.info Speculative Biologies https://www.pinaryoldas.info/WORK/Speculative-Biologies-2008 Kitty AI: Artificial Intelligence for Governance https://www.pinaryoldas.info/The-Kitty-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-for-Governance-2016 COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Pinar Yoldas Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E9: When an AI Governs Your City [w/ Pinar Yoldas] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E8
Aug 28, 2024 · 26 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E8: Taming AI, Playing AI [w/ Sanela Jahić]
Can everything – including vision, flexibility, imagination and other skills often associated with creative practices – be turned into data? Should artists feel threatened by AIs that compose music, make animation movies or write novels? Or is there something intrinsically uncomputable in the artistic mind? Are predictive algorithms creators’ friends or foes? Can you automate artistic processes and gestures? Artist Sanela Jahić collaborates with engineers, lecturers in creative and social computing as well as experts in health informatics to investigate workers’ subordination to machinery, the possible automation of artistic practices and the role of algorithms in the transition towards authoritarianism. RELATED LINKS Sanela Jahic https://sanelajahic.com NO TO AI, YES TO A NON-FASCIST APPARATUS https://sanelajahic.com/works/no-to-ai-yes-to-a-non-fascist-apparatus Books and authors mentioned in the conversation: Matko Meštrović https://monoskop.org/Matko_Me%C5%A1trovi%C4%87 Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, 2007 (Basic Books) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop Dan McQuillan, Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, 2022 (Bristol University Press) https://danmcquillan.org/pages/book.html COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Sanela Jahić Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E8: Taming AI, Playing AI [w/ Sanela Jahić] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E7
Aug 28, 2024 · 32 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E7: Solidarity, Perils and Ethics on Darknet Markets [w/ !Mediengruppe Bitnik]
Darknet markets, identity shielding, bots and cryptocurrencies have revolutionised commerce and society, each in its own way. What happens when you bring all these disrupting ingredients together? Doma Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf from !Mediengruppe Bitnik created a piece of software that randomly buys goods and services on the darknet and then gets them shipped to an art gallery. Alongside the passport scan and the odd pair of fake designer sneakers, the artists gained insights into who or what is legally responsible when a bot buys illicit goods, the emergence of new grey zones and the quality of the services provided by sellers on darkmarkets. RELATED LINKS !Mediengruppe Bitnik https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org Random Darknet Shopper https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r What Happens When a Software Bot Goes on a Darknet Shopping Spree? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/software-bot-darknet-shopping-spree-random-shopper ISSA – Island School of Social Autonomy https://issa-school.org COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: !Mediengruppe Bitnik Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E7: Solidarity, Perils and Ethics on Darknet Markets [w/ !Mediengruppe Bitnik] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E6
Aug 28, 2024 · 39 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E6: Chasing the Physicality of the Internet [w/ Evan Roth]
Internet has obliterated borders, distances and other hallmarks of geography, making us forget its material reality: its data centres, wires, routers, processors and a vast network of intercontinental cables. Artist Evan Roth has travelled the globe to make infrared videos of coastal landscapes where fiberoptic submarine cables emerge from the sea to enable communication across oceans. Contemplating the infrastructure that makes and shapes the internet helps us see through the digital noise, find new ways to share space with people we’ve never met and delineate a more complex picture of the vulnerabilities and complexities that shape the dynamics and geopolitics of 21st-century communication systems. RELATED LINKS Evan Roth https://www.evan-roth.com Red Lines https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/red-lines Books mentioned in the conversation: Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, 2012 (Ecco) https://www.andrewblum.net/tubes-2 Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, 2014 (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062598/thepeoplesplatform Arden Reed, Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell, 2019 (University of California Press) https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300583/slow-art COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Evan Roth Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E6: Chasing the Physicality of the Internet [w/ Evan Roth] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E5
Aug 28, 2024 · 35 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E5: Social Justice, Satire and Video Games [w/ Paolo Pedercini from MOLLEINDUSTRIA]
Can you make video games about environmental justice or labour? How about religion, the military, gun violence, mass incarceration, immigration or the Anthropocene? Can you entertain players with such hard-hitting matters? Can you use games to make players reflect on ethics, politics and the economy? Since 2003, MOLLEINDUSTRIA has been devising “artisanal remedies to the idiocy of mainstream entertainment in the form of short experimental games”. What started as a project to create mordant parodies soon became one of the most iconic pioneering works of critical video games RELATED LINKS MOLLEINDUSTRIA https://www.molleindustria.org LIKELIKE Gallery https://likelike.org Phone Story http://www.phonestory.org The New York Times Simulator https://molleindustria.itch.io/the-new-york-times-simulator COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Paolo Pedercini from MOLLEINDUSTRIA Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E5: Social Justice, Satire and Video Games [w/ Paolo Pedercini from MOLLEINDUSTRIA] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E4
Aug 28, 2024 · 44 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E4: Up-Close and Personal with Impersonal Power Structures [w/ Jill Magid]
What does it feel to infiltrate or work alongside structures of power that most of us find impersonal and intimidating? How do you capitalise on the systemic loopholes and quirks inherent to institutions of authority such as intelligence agencies, corporations, bureaucracies and law enforcement agencies? Artist, author and filmmaker Jill Magid makes use of small institutional quirks to establish an intimate connection with people “on the inside” and probe the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and the institutions that govern our lives. RELATED LINKS Jill Magid https://www.jillmagid.co Authority to Remove https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/level-2-gallery-jill-magid The Proposal https://www.jillmagid.com/film Watch on Apple TV https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-proposal/umc.cmc.6lwx7utr6f31iwher2e57d631 Amazon Prime https://www.amazon.com/Proposal-Jill-Magid/dp/B07RXP8377 Collecteurs https://www.collecteurs.com/article/jill-magid-the-proposal And Oscilloscope https://theproposal.oscilloscope.net/ Jerzy Kosinski, Cockpit, 1975 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit_(novel) COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Jill Magid Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E4: Up-Close and Personal with Impersonal Power Structures [w/ Jill Magid] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E3
Aug 28, 2024 · 37 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E3: How Much is Your Democracy Worth? [w/ UBERMORGEN]
In 2000, during the presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore, a group of “Maverick Austrian Business People” launched a platform that gave US voters the possibility to auction off their votes to bidders on the internet. Thirteen US states attempted to shut down the project with temporary restraining orders and injunctions. The media circus around the project was mind-boggling. As for the maverick business people behind the scandalous proposal, they were not entrepreneurs, they were artists: Liz Haas and Lúzius Bernhard from UBERMORGEN. Their artistic intervention went viral long before “becoming viral” was part of our vocabulary. What does this say about the enduring confusion between fact and fiction, the opacity of democratic institutions under capitalism and the ease with which a duo of provocateurs can manipulate the attention of the mass media? RELATED LINKS UBERMORGEN https://www.ubermorgen.com/UM/index.html [V]ote-auction https://www.vote-auction.net PMC Wagner Arts https://www.pmcwagner.art COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: UBERMORGEN Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E3: How Much is Your Democracy Worth? [w/ UBERMORGEN] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E2
Aug 28, 2024 · 30 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E2: Decolonising Museum Collections [w/ Nora Al-Badri]
The discussion about the growing list of looted and illicitly acquired museum treasures is one that most Westerners would rather not think about. Unless a scandal, a protest, a movie or a contemporary artwork forces ex-colonising countries to confront the firm grip that their institutions maintain on access to knowledge, cultural materials and the global narratives of history. Since 2016, Nora Al-Badri has been developing artworks that use AI, deepfake technology and 3D scanning to spark debates about power imbalances and ethical museum practices. RELATED LINKS Nora Al-Badri https://www.nora-al-badri.de The Other Nefertiti https://aksioma.org/the.other.nefertiti The Last Museum https://www.kw-berlin.de/thelastmuseum/nora-1 COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Nora Al-Badri Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E2: Decolonising Museum Collections [w/ Nora Al-Badri] appeared first on Aksioma.
S4 · E1
Aug 23, 2024 · 36 min
S4 [The Future Behind Us] E1: PsyOps and Other Secret Military Programmes [w/Trevor Paglen]
Over the years, Trevor Paglen has documented operations, locations and activities that were meant to remain hidden from the public. He has tracked and photographed the world of secret satellites, flew in a helicopter over the NSA headquarters with the express purpose of taking aerial photographs of it and, in the early 2000s, investigated the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme which consisted of kidnapping, disappearing and torturing people that the agency accused of terrorism. The artist, author and geographer discusses suspicious activities in the night sky, classified programmes and the weaponisation of human perception in the context of military and civilian influence operations. RELATED LINKS Trevor Paglen https://paglen.studio Doty https://paglen.studio/2023/05/10/doty Trevor Paglen, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World, 2008 (Melville House) https://paglen.studio/2020/04/22/symbology-patches COLOPHON Host: Régine Debatty Guest: Trevor Paglen Recording: Régine Debatty Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar The Future Behind Us podcast series Curated by: Régine Debatty Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Part of: PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay Conceived and co-organised by: Aksioma For: Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices Produced and co-organised by: Nova Gorica Arts Centre In the framework of: GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025 Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica The post S4 [The Future Behind Us] E1: PsyOps and Other Secret Military Programmes [w/Trevor Paglen] appeared first on Aksioma.
S3 · E5
May 29, 2024 · 47 min
S3 [(un)real data] E5: The Liminal Vibes Beyond Digital Conformity [w/ Valentina Tanni]
Internet aesthetics like vaporwave, the Backrooms and weirdcore seem to offer glimpses of alternate realities beyond the threshold of the real. From Freud’s “uncanny” to hauntology’s spectral futures, these are aesthetics that revel in the strange, the eerie and the infinitely ambiguous – a messy, chaotic antidote to the ruthlessly curated digital landscapes we’re fed today. Art historian and curator Valentina Tanni draws from her latest book Exit Reality and helps us unpack how these liminal aesthetics tap into feelings of ambiguity, the unsettling familiar and nostalgia for futures that never were – a reaction, perhaps, to the relentless corporate co-option and algorithmic control that has degraded so much of online culture into a bland, high-affect “midness”.

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