Broken Machines & Wild Imaginings

The exhibition “Broken Machines & Wild Imaginings” is a presentation of ten new installations by JUNGE AKADEMIE fellows whose artistic research examines artificial intelligence. These speculative and experimental practices question and materialise how power and ethics are dealt with in the context of AI. The focus here is less on artistic innovations that improve existing systems by making them more ethical but rather on giving visibility to the social, historical, cultural and political realities and forces that have given rise to AI and continue to shape it. In response to the fragile realities of machines and their extractivist logic, algorithmic violence and techno-solutionism, the artists create poetic worlds, playful concepts and strategies of repair. They develop alternative paradigms, narratives and imaginings of technologies and a digital life beyond the systems of Big Tech. Themes range from deep-sea cables as historical power conduits to Indigenous technologies and cosmologies, AI-based human models, queer and decolonial computing and questions about digital immortality.

The JUNGE AKADEMIE, the international artist-in-residence programme at the Akademie der Künste, has been tackling the topic of AI since 2019 through its Human Machine Fellowship, in partnership with the E.ON-Stiftung’s VISIT programme, and AI Anarchies, which is funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The exhibition “Broken Machines & Wild Imaginings” brings together the artistic results in a major show.

With the fellows:
Sarah Ciston, Sara Culmann, D’Andrade & Walla Capelobo, Petja Ivanova, Pedro Oliveira, Sahej Rahal, Aarti Sunder, SONDER (Peter Behrbohm und Anton Steenbock), Natasha Tontey, Tin Wilke & Laura Fong Prosper

Curated by: Clara Herrmann
Curatorial Assistance: Nataša Vukajlović

Cooperation partners:
E-WERK Luckenwalde, VISIT, ZK/U-Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Weise7, Haus für Poesie

Media partners:
Berlin Art Link – Flux FM – Fräulein Magazine – HOLO – TAZ

Exhibition programme

1 June, 7 pm
Exhibition Opening
Foyer

4/11/18/25 June, 11:30 – 3 pm
Paramnesia SESSIONS
with SONDER (Peter Behrbohm & Anton Steenbock)
Hall 2

13 June, 5 pm
Transient#3
Concert/Performance
Pedro Oliveira & M Takara
Hall 1

14 June, 5 pm
Concert
The Quirk
D’Andrade
Hall 2

15 June, 5:30 pm
Poetry Conversation
Sarah Ciston & Swantje Lichtenstein – The Filtration of Machine-Machines
Hall1 1
Talk as part of poetry festival Berlin: no one is an island

16 June, 5 pm
Performance
Ghosting the Machine
Sahej Rahal
Hall 2

Curators’ Tours with Artists
Tuesday and Thursday 5 pm

6 June: Sahej Rahal
8 June: Natasha Tontey
13. June: Pedro Oliveira & Performance Transient#3
15. June: Sarah Ciston & POESIEGESRPÄCH
20. June: Aarti Sunder
22. June: Petja Ivanova
27. June: Tin Wilke & Laura Fong Prosper
29. June: Sara Culmann
4 July: SONDER (Peter Behrbohm & Anton Steenbock)
6 July: D’Andrade feat. Walla Capelobo