Curators Tominga O’Donnell and Stefano Collicelli Cagol will introduce the main concepts behind the exhibition, followed by an artist talk by Agnieszka Kurant, who is one of the participating artists. She will be in conversation with her collaborators, researchers F. LeRon Shults and Justin E. Lane, addressing artificial intelligence.
This event is free and exclusive for our members.
The conversation will be held in English.
Curators’ Introduction
Tominga O’Donnell and Stefano Collicelli Cagol are the curators behind The Machine Is Us. In this curators’ talk, you will be able to hear more about the title, which is taken from A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, as well as the wide range of artworks included in the exhibition.
Artificial Intelligence: Agnieszka Kurant in conversation with F. LeRon Shults & Justin E. Lane
Where’s the ‘art’ in artificial intelligence?
Polish artist Agnieszka Kurant's piece Conversions V (2022), showcases crystal paint on a copper plate physically reacts to changes in society, converting collective unrest into electrical and thermal energy. The work uses artificial intelligence to analyse opinions and emotions in thousands of Twitter posts by members of protest movements around the globe.
Together with her collaborators F. LeRon Shults and Justin E. Lane, they’ll discuss and critically examine cultural cybernetics – the ability to analyse and predict social change and cultural evolution with Artificial Intelligence. They will talk about their ongoing collaboration which spans Kurant's work series Conversions (2019–22), Adjacent Possible (2021) and Sentimentite (2022).
Image above: The Great Adventure of Material World © 2019 Lu Yang
Tominga O’Donnell is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH in Oslo, where she/they curated the programme Munchmuseet on the Move (2016–19), adopting a queer curatorial approach and commissioning new work from a range of artists, including Toril Johannessen & Marjolijn Dijkman, Trollkrem, Sara Eliassen, Pedro Gómez-Egaña and Kirsten Astrup & Maria Bordorff.
Stefano Collicelli Cagol is Director at Centro Pecci, the contemporary art centre in Prato, Tuscany. In 2020 he curated the large-scale exhibition Quadriennale d'arte 2022 FUORI dedicated to Italian art. Between 2015–17, he was Curator at Large at Trondheim kunstmuseum. In 2014 he completed his PhD in history of exhibitions at the Royal College of Art, London.
Agnieszka Kurant is a US based interdisciplinary conceptual artist who investigates collective intelligence, non-human intelligences and the exploitations within surveillance capitalism. She explores the future of labour and creativity, as well as transformations of the human in relation to technology.
F. LeRon Shults is a Professor at the Department of Global Development and Planning at Agder University, and scientific director of the NORCE Center for Modelling Social Systems in Kristiansand, southern Norway. He has published 18 books and is interested in AI and data models that simulate human conflicts arising from the climate emergency.
Justin E. Lane is a computational social scientist and academic researcher whose work focuses on analysing and predicting societal change with Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence (Bloomsbury, 2021) and is the co-founder and CEO of CulturePulse.
