Who Is the Machine? Talks, panels & performances

In connection with the exhibition The Machine Is Us, we present a dynamic afternoon event with talks, panels and performances.

Artists Zach Blas, Agnieszka Kurant and Cory Arcangel are joined by special guests: celebrated queer theorist Jack Halberstam and world-renowned curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. The international event also features Oslo-based moderator Lara Okafor and musician Laura-Marie Rueslåtten. 

Join us to explore the promises and dangers of new technologies. Who gets marginalised in the digital revolution? Is artificial intelligence a new religion? Can computers be creative? 

Conversations will be held in English. 

14.00–16.00 Queering Technology    
14.00–14.15 ‘AI sermon’ by Zach Blas 
Welcome by Ingrid Moe, Head of MUNCH Live  
14.15–14.20 Introduction by Tominga O’Donnell and Liv Brissach 
14.20–14.45 Zach Blas presentation  
14.45–15.30 Jack Halberstam keynote 
15.30–16.00 Q&A with Jack Halberstam and Zach Blas, moderated by Lara Okafor 
 
16.00–16.30 Break: free coffee and pastries  
 
16.30–18.00 Artificial Art? 
16.30–17.05 Agnieszka Kurant and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev  
17.05–17.20 Q&A moderated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol 
17.20–17.45 Cory Arcangel presentation 
17.45–18.00 Performance: Cory Arcangel’s Hail Mary performed on handbells by carillonneur Laura-Marie Rueslåtten 

About the paticipants: 

Jack Halberstam is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. His work focuses on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment. His latest book is Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (Duke UP 2020), and he is currently finishing a second volume entitled Unworlding: An Aesthetics of Collapse.   
 
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American curator, researcher and scholar, and currently serves as Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti in Turin. She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence and has been the curator of the Sydney Biennial, dOCUMENTA(13), and the Istanbul Biennial. She has been an advisor to the first MUNCH Triennale.  
 
Lara Okafor works as a software developer and holds a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Oslo. They have many years of organising experience within the queer community and wrote their thesis on digital security for queer people of colour. 
 
Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker and writer whose practice spans moving image, computation, theory, performance, and science fiction. He is interested in the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, and the internet, often from a queer perspective.  
 
Agnieszka Kurant is an 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.  
 
Cory Arcangel is an artist, composer, curator and entrepreneur. He hacks technological systems and corporate visual language to highlight their absurdity. He launched his merchandise and publishing imprint Arcangel Surfware in 2014 and many of his projects are freely available as open source online.    
 
Laura-Marie Rueslåtten studied at the Scandinavian Carillon School in Denmark and is the carillonneur at Oslo City Hall. She has collaborated with Cory Arcangel on Hail Mary, which she will play at 11 am on Saturday 1 October on the carillon bells at Oslo City Hall. She has created a version of this performance for handbells for the seminar the same afternoon.  
 
Tominga O’Donnell is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH, where she/they curated the programme Munchmuseet on the Move (2016–2019), adopting a queer curatorial approach and commissioning a range of off-site art projects. At MUNCH, O’Donnell is the curator of solo exhibitions with Sandra Mujinga, Camille Henrot and Piya Wanthiang in 2022 and heads up the curatorial team for the first MUNCH Triennale.  
 
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. He is external curator on the MUNCH Triennale curatorial team.  
 
Liv Brissach is Curator of Contemporary art at MUNCH and part of the MUNCH Triennale curatorial team. Brissach previously worked at Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) as coordinator of OCA’s publications and as assistant curator for ‘The Sámi Pavilion’ exhibition at the Nordic Pavilion of the Biennale Arte 2022. As a writer, Brissach contributed texts for Munchmuseet on the Move, Kunstkritikk, Billedkunst, OCA and Fotogalleriet.