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Tactics&Practice [podcast]

Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana

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English

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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”.
S3 · E4
May 29, 2024 · 38 min
S3 [(un)real data] E4: How Mind-Flattening Algorithmic Tweaks Ruined Posting [w/ Günseli Yalcinkaya]
If we paraphrase McLuhan, today’s medium is the algorithm: how is this universal mediator shaping us as content creators and consumers? How does it feel to be online amid different polarising forces, when consensus reality has completely broken down? Günseli Yalcinkaya, writer and researcher specialising in youth and internet culture, has been immersing herself in the insane hidden pits of the internet to shed light on central tendencies and viral phenomena – from homogenised beauty standards imposed by filters to psyops, military e-girl influencers and heads of nation states who post memes on X – through which our online world is becoming increasingly both mid and weird.
S3 · E3
May 29, 2024 · 46 min
S3 [(un)real data] E3: Unmasking AI’s Pixel Puppetry [w/ Eryk Salvaggio]
What exactly is in the images generated by AI? Is it possible to decode training datasets and detect biases that fusion models, such as Dall-E or Midjourney, reproduce? Eryk Salvaggio, researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence, suggests a method that enables anyone to peel off the layers behind the datasets. Exploiting the ghost human labour needed to create images and label them, the full automation of AI dehumanises the representation of the real, reducing it to clusters of pixels rearranged by statistical mathematical models. However, human agency and creativity are nested between the dots of the pixels, and they still give us the power to scratch at the surfaces that algorithms are constantly trying to reproduce. Support us on Patreon or otherwise! RELATED LINKS [Website] Eryk Salvaggio COLOPHON Host: Neja Berger Guest: Eryk Salvaggio Recording and editing: Neja Berger Music and Audio Mix: Gašper Torkar Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024 Producer: Marcela Okretič Part of Tactics&Practice#15: (un)real data – real effects Curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf in Domagoj Smoljo) In collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana. The post S3 [(un)real data] E3: Unmasking AI’s Pixel Puppetry [w/ Eryk Salvaggio] appeared first on Aksioma.
S3 · E2
May 29, 2024 · 40 min
S3 [(un)real data] E2: Could We Stop Reproducing a Deepfake Past? [w/ Wendy Chun]
Predictive models based on big data are founded on the idea that knowing the past enables us to predict the future, but what kind of future are we constructing when the models are based on a deepfake version of the past? Correlation has overtaken causation, while homophily shadows differences across these models that are not only applied in social media platforms’ algorithms, but also in policing predictives or risk assessment systems. We discuss how these practices reproduce bias and generate self-fulfilling prophecies with Wendy Chun, professor of New Media, Director of the Digital Democracies Institute and author of numerous books. Is it possible to exit the default world of endless reproducibility and conceive of a different future from what has been left out in the past?
S3 · E1
May 29, 2024 · 53 min
S3 [(un)real data] E1: (In)dividuality and the Quantified Self [w/ Felix Stalder]
The rise of computation in the 1950s shifted society to one constructed purely in commercial terms, where selling and buying have become the main social relation and every possible human form of contact is reimagined as a service or a product. What does this imply for the self? When individuals are broken up into parts that are measurable as data streams, the self is quantified and life is understood through numbers, where the ultimate number is profit. Professor of Digital Culture and Network Theory Felix Stalder discusses the ambiguity of data, the limits of computation and what interpretations might exist beyond the world as a set of measurements.

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