Art in the Age of Average. The new AI-thoritarians.

Conference
Tue, June 3, 17.30–21 and Wed, June 4, 12–19
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

– Recording of the event in July/August on www.carrier-bag.net –

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?

Abstracts

!Mediengruppe Bitnik: Unreal Data

With the shift to data-dri­ven soci­eties, auto­mat­ed data col­lec­tion has become an intrin­sic com­po­nent of most tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems and devices. The data we pro­duce and our inter­ac­tions with the sys­tems are the fuel these sys­tems oper­ate on shap­ing the feeds we scroll, the news we read, the items we are rec­om­mend­ed, the bor­ders we are allowed to cross, the jobs we can suc­cess­ful­ly apply for.
Data is thus no longer just the unam­bigu­ous mark of an event or a state but has the abil­i­ty to pro­duce real effects and real world out­comes. Can data be used not just to describe the world but instead to strate­gi­cal­ly inter­vene in it? Can prac­tices of Unreal Data – of gen­er­at­ing spe­cif­ic data to trig­ger cer­tain out­comes – offer ways to resist and regain agency when opt­ing out is no longer an option?

Gregory Chatonsky: Vectofascism

Vectofascism over­whelms us, sat­u­rat­ing the space with infor­ma­tion that exhausts us. Hence the impor­tance of defin­ing it pre­cise­ly, artic­u­lat­ing it and dis­tin­guish­ing it from the fas­cisms of the last cen­tu­ry. Latent space becomes an onto-polit­i­cal par­a­digm that enables to deal not with mass­es but with sta­tis­ti­cal vec­tors, and to indus­tri­al­ize the pro­duc­tion of the dif­fer­end (Lyotard), mak­ing all things ridicu­lous, equiv­a­lent by equidis­tance. We’ll be ask­ing what kind of latent AI spaces vecto­fas­cists use to move from pro­pa­gan­da to prop­a­ga­tion. We might also ask how to make life impos­si­ble for them.

Simon Denny: Vibe-coding the Future

Techno-opti­mist Manifesto and American Dynamism, VC Marc Andreesen’s for­ward-look­ing and influ­en­tial texts, pro­vide a short­hand for how his increas­ing­ly promi­nent com­mu­ni­ty frames their think­ing.
Andreessen: “I was inspired by a lot of pri­or man­i­festos, one in par­tic­u­lar that I enjoyed tremen­dous­ly, which is the Futurist Manifesto from the Italian Futurist Art Movement and maybe around 1910. So I don’t know that I hit the bar of the Futurist Manifesto, but that was kind of my inspi­ra­tional start­ing point.“
Denny’s pre­sen­ta­tion con­tex­tu­alis­es the vibe of Andreessen’s pitch, revis­it­ing Futurism through the Bronze-Age Deco AI spir­it that has cap­tured this com­mu­ni­ty.

Constant Dullaart: The hyperreal iconoclasm exploit

The long­stand­ing polit­i­cal and finan­cial incen­tive to indis­cernibly spoof rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been empow­ered by syn­thet­ic opin­ions, images, news, and their auto­mat­ed gen­er­a­tion. Private social media plat­forms open­ly facil­i­tate this hijack by set­ting terms of engage­ment while allow­ing cap­i­tal to manip­u­late vis­i­bil­i­ty, fak­ing rel­e­vance and con­sen­sus. This dynam­ic embold­ens the vec­to­ri­al­ist class, flood­ing dis­course and drown­ing out leg­i­ble sig­nals in a state of hyper­re­al­i­ty. The result is a new icon­o­clasm through instru­men­tal over­load, mark­ing a broad­er semi­otic shift where mean­ing col­laps­es, sym­bols con­fuse, and sen­ti­ment over­rides fact. Creating con­di­tions where spec­ta­cle replaces dis­course, stig­mas shape com­mu­ni­ties, and unchecked pow­er flour­ish­es.

Navine G. Dossos: The Only Flowering Plant in the Ocean

How did we go from mak­ing dig­i­tal work about drones and sur­veil­lance to mak­ing ceram­ic pots wrapped in sea­grass?! James Bridle and I moved to a Greek island, start­ed a col­lec­tive stu­dio called Vessel and we start­ed build­ing our own house. This talk charts how our think­ing about tech­nol­o­gy, intel­li­gence and the matrix of life-mat­ter has evolved over the past five years from a deep engage­ment with an online world to now being com­mit­ted to our biore­gion and its eco­log­i­cal real­i­ties.

Mat Dryhurst: Protocol Art

Our con­tention is that the most con­se­quen­tial aes­thet­ic and ide­o­log­i­cal debates today occur at the lev­el of pro­to­cols, upstream of tra­di­tion­al media forms. Those who design the affor­dances, incen­tives, and struc­tures of par­tic­i­pa­tion shape the con­di­tions under which cul­ture is pro­duced and per­ceived. Yet this sub­strate remains large­ly invis­i­ble, uncri­tiqued and unchal­lenged. “Protocol Art” pro­pos­es a shift toward inter­ven­ing at this foun­da­tion­al lay­er by design­ing new sys­tems, social con­tracts, and rule sets that encode and exe­cute val­ues. Artists are chal­lenged to engage in pro­to­col design, not sim­ply as com­men­tary but as direct com­pe­ti­tion. In this light, art is alive and urgent.

Antonio Somaini: Politics of Latent Spaces

A the­o­ry of images and visu­al cul­ture, today, needs a the­o­ry of latent spaces. In a his­tor­i­cal phase in which images are more and more gen­er­at­ed, mod­i­fied, cir­cu­lat­ed, seen and described by or with the help of dif­fer­ent kinds of AI mod­els, we need to under­stand the cru­cial role played by an abstract, math­e­mat­i­cal con­struct whose cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions could hard­ly be over­es­ti­mat­ed. Latent spaces play a cru­cial role in gen­er­a­tive AI mod­els, from GANs to the recent dif­fu­sion mod­els. They also play a cen­tral role in the con­tem­po­rary artis­tic prac­tices that engage crit­i­cal­ly with AI, respond­ing to its increas­ing pres­ence in every aspect of cul­ture, soci­ety, pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics. For a few years now, artists have devel­oped dif­fer­ent strate­gies to explore or mod­i­fy the exist­ing, dom­i­nant latent spaces, or to pro­duce their own alter­na­tive, antag­o­nist, counter-hege­mon­ic ones. Considered togeth­er, these dif­fer­ent strate­gies show the aware­ness with which the field of con­tem­po­rary art is tack­ling the pres­ence and the agency of this hid­den lay­er of math­e­mat­i­cal abstrac­tion that par­tic­i­pates in the shap­ing of cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal imag­i­nar­ies.

Biographies

!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read – the not medi­en­gruppe bit­nik) work on and with the Internet. Their artis­tic prac­tice expands from the dig­i­tal to affect phys­i­cal spaces, often inten­tion­al­ly employ­ing loss of con­trol to chal­lenge estab­lished struc­tures and mech­a­nisms. They have been known to sub­vert sur­veil­lance cam­eras, bug an opera house to broad­cast its per­for­mances to peo­ple at home, phys­i­cal­ly glitch a build­ing, and unleash a bot on a three-month dark­net shop­ping spree where it ran­dom­ly bought items like keys, cig­a­rettes, train­ers and Ecstasy and had them sent direct­ly to the gallery space.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik reg­u­lar­ly col­lab­o­rate with oth­er artists, cura­tors and insti­tu­tions. Recently, they curat­ed pro­grammes, exhi­bi­tions and con­fer­ences on Unreal Data and prac­tices of col­lec­tive action and resis­tance. They also launched a foun­da­tion to fund rad­i­cal­ly con­tem­po­rary Internet art called Error 417 Expectation Failed.

Gregory Chatonsky is a fran­co-cana­di­an artist who explores the ten­sion between human fini­tude and tech­no­log­i­cal excess. His work exam­ines mem­o­ry, extinc­tion and res­ur­rec­tion. Founder of the Netart plat­form Incident.net (1994), he ini­tial­ly stud­ied dig­i­tal mate­ri­al­i­ty as ruins and flows (2000s), before turn­ing to AI (since 2009). His work has been exhib­it­ed in Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, MOCA Taipei, Museum of Moving Image, Hubei Wuhan Museum. His aca­d­e­m­ic career includes teach­ing at Fresnoy, UQAM, EUR-Artec, and Musashino Art University.

Simon Denny is an artist born in Auckland, liv­ing in Berlin. He has made exhib­tions at the New Zealand pavil­ion at the 56th Venice Biennale; Serpentine Galleries, London; MoMA PS1, New York; the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Portikus, Frankfurt; MUMOK, Vienna; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; OCAT, Shenzhen amaong oth­ers. He cofound­ed the artist men­tor­ing pro­gram BPA// Berlin Program for Artists and serves as pro­fes­sor of Time Based Media at the HFBK Hamburg.

Constant Dullaart’s (NL, 1979) prac­tice explores how social and cul­tur­al val­ues rever­ber­ate in tools and tech­nol­o­gy. Dullaart cre­ates works to empha­sise an enjoy­able fric­tion between old and new, man­u­al and auto­mat­ed, online and offline, real or not. He decon­structs and analy­ses the spe­cif­ic human cir­cum­stances under which tech­no­log­i­cal instru­ments are cre­at­ed, and how this influ­ences the way the instru­ments are con­se­quent­ly used. His prac­tice ranges from AI mod­els, to start-ups, vir­tu­al armies and cus­tom agents to web­sites, cus­tom social media and con­ven­tion­al media. Constant is the found­ing pro­fes­sor of Networked Materialities at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nürnberg.

Navine G. Dossos is a visu­al artist liv­ing and work­ing on the island of Aegina. She has lived in Greece for almost ten years, with five years spent in Athens and five years now on Aegina. Her work is pri­mar­i­ly as a mur­al painter, but in recent years she has expand­ed into oth­er areas of applied craft such as sewing and ceram­ics. Her work is often cre­at­ed through com­mu­ni­ty work­shops and she is inter­est­ed in ways that art­works can be dis­sem­i­nat­ed for free to the pub­lic, or ben­e­fit the pub­lic realm in a mean­ing­ful way.

Holly Herndon & Mathew Dryhurst are artists renowned for their pio­neer­ing work in machine learn­ing, soft­ware and music. They devel­op tech­ni­cal pro­to­cols that facil­i­tate expan­sive art­works across media, but are pro­posed as art­works unto them­selves.
In 2024 they pre­sent­ed the solo exhi­bi­tion The Call at Serpentine Gallery, and took part in the Whitney Biennial. They co-found­ed Spawning, an orga­ni­za­tion build­ing pub­lic domain AI mod­els and data infra­struc­ture. Their crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed musi­cal works are released through 4AD and RVNG Intl. Holly holds a Ph.D in Computer Music from Stanford CCRMA, Mathew is large­ly self taught.

Antonio Somaini is pro­fes­sor of film, media, and visu­al cul­ture the­o­ry at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. He is also a senior mem­ber of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), work­ing on a research project on the impact of AI tech­nolo­gies on images, visu­al cul­ture and con­tem­po­rary artis­tic prac­tices. He is the chief cura­tor of the exhi­bi­tion Le monde selon l’IA / The World Through AI at the Jeu de Paume muse­um in Paris (11 April — 21 September 2025). Among his lat­est pub­li­ca­tions are the essays “Algorithmic Images: Artificial Intelligence and Visual Culture” (Grey Room 93, Fall 2023) and “A Theory of Latent Spaces” in the cat­a­logue of the Jeu de Paume exhi­bi­tion.