RADICAL PLURALITY ~ Post-signature: from autopoiesis (self-making) to sympoesis (making with others/non-humans)

In this talk, Klap explores the evolving nature of authorship, collaboration, and technology to challenge the traditional idea of the singular artist-genius and highlight decentralized and collaborative creative processes, including the role of non-human actors. Responsible technology use, diversity in perspectives, and ethical considerations in collaborative projects are emphasized, with an example of the interactive audio-visual installation LAWKI, which uses audiences’ search data to generate an opera through artificial intelligence and machine learning. The talk will underscore the importance of recognizing diverse perspectives, the shift from individual authorship to collective creation, and the blurred boundaries of authorship in the contemporary art- and design landscape.

Roosje Klap researches the experimental boundaries of custom-fit design through close collaborations with artists, curators, architects, (type) designers, and writers. The group of ARK (Atelier Roosje Klap), with their research-based interdisciplinary approach, reflects a generation of designers that define their assignments alongside commissions. As an experienced educator and coach specializing in graphic design, media art, and digital humanities, Roosje led and designed curricula and workshops for international art academies and universities to guide and inspire creatives and enhance equitable relationships in their habitats. She headed the Graphic Design and Non-Linear departments at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) and was a core advisor at Van Eyck Academie before embarking on her Ph.D. research in which she investigates collective work with nonhuman agents under the term 'post-signature'.

GHOST

This lecture-performance by Asa Horvitz is about his piece GHOST. Inspired by the death of his father and many members of his father’s family, in GHOST Horvitz and colleagues sing texts created by an AI system trained on hundreds of books related to death, loss, and mourning. GHOST is part of THE SAVED NIGHT, a trilogy exploring non-human presences and the transformation of human-centered subjectivity at stake in the contemporary world.

Asa Horvitz (US/NL) is a performance maker and composer/musician. Horvitz studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton and graduated from DAS Arts/DAS Theatre in 2021. Recent work has been supported by The New Museum, Microscope Gallery (NYC), deSingel, Het HEM, Het Muziekgebouw, Frascati, wpZimmer, etc. He led the band VALES; collaborations include Ben Seretan, Anna Webber, Kalup Linzy, Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci, Pavel Zustiak. Horvitz is a MacDowell, Fulbright, and Camargo fellow, and is supported by Standplaats Midden Utrecht. He previously lived in New York and Warsaw where he was active in DIY and professional art contexts and later studied psychoanalysis and various ways of working with dreams, before moving to the Netherlands. https://asahorvitz.com/

In the age of AI, how does the concept of “voice” start to be reshaped by generative technologies like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion or MidJourney?

Notions of co-creation and machine-human collaboration open up questions of what authorship and personal voice mean when considering yourself a part of a network of knowledge rather than a singular voice. Departing from Ursula K. Le Guin’s definition of spear (hero + beginning and end) vs bag narrative (a storytelling process with no beginning or end), we will explore how AI and algorithmic thinking can expand our ideas around creative egos and move towards collaborative structures of knowledge and culture production—shifting towards notions of digital kin and machine-human co-creation.

How can this “simple” change in perspective activate spaces of agency that counteract embedded hierarchies and biases in the algorithms?

Mariana Fernández Mora is an artist, writer, researcher, feminist and the current editor at ARIAS Amsterdam and leading the A.I. thematic line over there. Her practice intersects the fields of performance, linguistics and technology. She is fascinated by fictional archives, piles of stuff, hedges, memes, guinea pigs and PowerPoints. Currently, she is focused on researching A.I., language and our intimate and sometimes problematic relationship with technology.

Through a revision of the work of The Digital Witchcraft Institute we will cover a comparative analysis between tech and the supernatural, the use of the digital realm as a spiritual facilitator, and magic as a design methodology. This trajectory will allow us to evaluate the possibilities for mystical and religious technologies in the 21st century.

Danae Tapia is a writer, multimedia artist and technologist born in the Chilean working class. She is a 2022-2024 resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and a researcher and lecturer of Hacking and Autonomous Practices at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She is also the founder of The Digital Witchcraft Institute, an arts organization registered in The Netherlands. This venture was Danae’s project for her fellowship with the Mozilla Foundation which started as an artistic-research experience dedicated to collect and showcase advanced non-conforming approaches to the use of tech.

Technologies like artificial intelligence do not magically appear out of thin air, yet their magical appeal is promising us the dark depths of original creation. How can this promise be broken by artistic practices that harbour an interest in the body, in decolonial work, in history?

Arif is a research fellow of the research consortium AI Forensics (2022-25) and a PhD candidate at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. His research focuses on algorithmic conflict prediction within the humanitarian sector. Currently, Arif is the head of a temporary master’s at Sandberg Instituut titled Artificial Times, which invites students to critically engage with music, sound and AI. Arif co-founded the radio Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, a curatorial platform for contemporary art, critical music and sound. Arif also produces music and sound pieces for exhibitions and performances.

Technology is obsessed with death and living beyond death. Both technological developments of AI as well as cultural imaginaries in popular culture address the dream of immortality through virtual avatars, chatbots, holograms, robots, and other means. In Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural  (2019), Natale and Pasulka propose that a core belief around technology is that it can transcend the biological limit of death by creating artificial life. In the future we may all upload our consciousness -- but who is allowed to live forever on the internet? This lecture performance draws on the dual definition of the term "medium" through Jeffrey Sconce's work Haunted Media (2000) which addresses medium as mediation as well as medium as spirit contact. Why have the spiritual underpinnings of the term been overshadowed by its technical definition in media studies? Through the media archaeological method, the work approaches current technologies through its historical counterpart: the telegraph cables of 19th century Europe and United States. You are invited to join a seance to resurrect these minor histories, reflect on the colonialist origins of communication technology, and untangle the belief systems that sustain the desire to live forever.

Dr. Evelyn Wan is Assistant Professor in Media, Arts, and Society at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is the Programme Coordinator for MA Arts and Society, and teaches a range of courses on contemporary performance practice, cultural and critical theory, and research methodologies.

Wan graduated cum laude from her PhD programme and was awarded a national dissertation prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in the Netherlands in 2019. She is currently working on her book project, “How We Lost Sense of Time: A Prehistory of Algorithmic Governance”, through the lens of decolonial media studies and performance studies. Her research studies the biopolitics and necropolitics of both historical technological inventions and contemporary emerging technology. Her writings have appeared in International Journal of Communication, GPS: Global Performance Studies, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Theatre Journal, amongst others.

Wan was the founder of the Future Advisory Board, an emerging scholar initiative within Performance Studies international (PSi), and served as a member from 2014-2019. Outside of her academic endeavours, she has worked on theatre projects with asylum seeker youths and has collaborated with various international artists in staging contemporary dance, physical theatre, and site-specific performances as both performer and dramaturg. Her current performance practice uses artistic research methods that intersects cultural heritage research with inter-Asian ocean histories, island studies, and gender and religious studies.

This edition of Studium Generale is strongly inspired by the concept of technodiversity by Yuk Hui, technology philosopher and recently professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

We are honored that Yuk Hui will give a short lecture for us on technodiversity and the related term cosmotechnics. Afterwards, media theorist, writer and activist Geert Lovink will interview Yuk and also discuss his current practice. The afternoon ends with a Q&A led by Alec Mateo.

Yuk Hui is Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. Hui studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong, wrote a PhD thesis under Bernard Stiegler at Goldsmiths University London, and obtained his Habilitation in philosophy from Leuphana University Lüneburg. Hui is author of several monographs that have been translated into a dozen languages, including On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China:-An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016), Recursivity and Contingency ( 2019), and Art and Cosmotechnics (2021). Hui is co-editor of 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (2015) and editor of Philosophy after Automation (Philosophy Today, Vol.65. No.2, 2021), among others. He is currently completing a monograph titled Machine and Sovereignty for University of Minnesota Press. Since 2014, Hui has been the convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology and sits as a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020.

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022). He studied political science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and received his PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), The Future of Art Criticism and MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing experiments, critical meme research, participatory hybrid events and precarity in the arts. From 2007-2018 he was media theory professor at the European Graduate School. In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the UvA Art History Department. The Chair (one day a week) is supported by the HvA. Since early 2022 he is involved in support campagnes for Ukranian artists, in particular UkrainaTV, a streaming art studio, operating out of Krakow.

Drawing on her book, Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford University Press, 2023), Rizvana Bradley reads the recent work of Sondra Perry to develop an anteaesthetic critique of the metaphysical architecture of worlding.  Bradley argues for the importance of attending to the ulterior force of unworlding as a racially gendered emergence or submergence that is anterior and antithetical to worlding. The first part of the talk undertakes a reading of Perry’s immersive video installation Typhoon coming on (2018), which deconstructs the phenomenological body-subject of worldly inhabitation, and its aesthetic reproduction in and through the logic of value. The second part of the talk turns to Perry’s Flesh Wall (2016–20), which utilized ninety-two massive digital displays in Times Square to produce a media architecture from a finely modulated image of her own skin, cut, splayed, and magnified. Demonstrating that, in Perry’s work, the dissimulated ‘black body’ begins to blur into the enfleshed existence it conceals, and drawing upon deconstructionist critiques of architecture and expositions of the racial genealogy of architectural forms, Bradley argues that Perry’s Flesh Wall traces the antephenomenal existence of blackness, signaling a radical critique of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “the flesh of the world” and the phenomenological body-subject who would inhabit this chiasmus. In short, Bradley insists that Perry’s work stages the unworlding that is vestibular to “the flesh of the world.”

Rizvana Bradley is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the History of Art and the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the 2023-24 Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship for American Art at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Bradley’s book, Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form, was published in 2023 by Stanford University Press. Her scholarly work has been published in Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism, Film Quarterly, Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, TDR: The Drama Review, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, and Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Her art criticism has also been published in The Yale Review, Artforum, e-flux, Art in America, and Parkett.

Acid Clouds, Niels Schrader
Acid Clouds is a research project initiated by graphic designer Niels Schrader and photographer Roel Backaert. It includes among others a series of photographs that maps the material traces of virtual data in the Netherlands. The project investigates the massively resource-intensive and earthbound properties of digital storage, and questions the image of “the cloud” as clean, sterile and environmentally-friendly domain. Acid Clouds is also becoming a book publication that raises urgent ethical and political issues and questions in the field of digital rights, the ownership and administration of big data, the power of large tech companies, public access to information, privacy issues and the vulnerability of data versus their indelibility.

Niels Schrader is a concept-driven information designer with a fascination for numbers and data. He is founder of the Amsterdam-based design studio Mind Design and member of the AGI – Alliance Graphique Internationale. From 2013 to 2021 he was together with Roosje Klap head of the Graphic Design department at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Currently he leads the Non Linear Narrative master programme at KABK. Next to his design practice Schrader writes regularly for Novum – World of Graphic Design and Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain. In his role as an educator Schrader focuses on social, political and environmental processes driven and influenced by digital technologies. In this context, he has initiated a number of large-scale research projects with partners from outside the academic environment. These institutions include governmental and non-governmental organisations like i.a. the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch Ministry of Finance, the National Archives, the National Library of the Netherlands, Free Press Unlimited, Greenpeace, Hivos and Amnesty International.

On Data Architectures and the Ontologies of Depth, Marina Otero Verzier
This presentation will explore emerging paradigms in digital storage and suggest alternative approaches for our engagement with data. Drawing on field research by Otero, the lecture aims to shed light on the environmental footprint of what is commonly referred to as the 'cloud.' It will weave together cosmic timelines with both computational and terrestrial dynamics. A particular focus will be given to the struggles sustained by indigenous communities to protect their lives, sovereignty, and rights in the face of extractive industries underpinning digital infrastructures.

 Marina Otero Verzier is an architect, researcher, and visiting professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Advisory Committee for Architecture and Design at the Reina Sofía National Museum and Art Center. Otero Verzier specializes in the relationships between architecture and digital infrastructures and resources such as lithium that sustain them. In 2022, she received the Harvard Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. Between 2020 and 2023, she was the Director of the Master in Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, and from 2015 to 2022, Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut, where she led initiatives focused on labor, extraction, and mental health. Previously, she was Director of Programming for the Global Studio-X Network, Columbia GSAPP. Otero Verzier has curated exhibitions such as ‘Compulsive Desires: On the Extraction of Lithium and Rebellious Mountains’ at the Municipal Gallery of Porto in 2023, ‘Work, Body, Leisure,’ the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018, and ‘After Belonging,’ the Oslo Architecture Triennale in 2016. She has co-edited “Automated Landscapes” (2023), “Lithium: States of Exhaustion” (2021), “A Matter of Data” (2021), “More-than-Human” (2020), “Architecture of Appropriation” (2019), “Work, Body, Leisure” (2018), and “After Belonging” (2016), among others. Otero Verzier studied at TU Delft and ETSA Madrid and Columbia GSAPP. In 2016, she received her Ph.D. from ETSA Madrid.