The alien image, the mirror image
Event | Friday, April 26 at 6 p.m.
The 7th edition of the DONE program explores the impact of a new generation of synthetic images on contemporary visual culture.
This activity marks the culmination of a cycle dedicated to the instability of the contemporary image ecosystem and, therefore, more than a closure, it opens the way for future research on the technical, cultural, and social processes surrounding visual production through the concepts of "alien image" and "mirror image."
We will have artists and observers of contemporary creative practices to collectively define possible lines of escape. We will share the experiences of the "Queer Machine" laboratory, led by Tanit Plana and carried out at Foto Colectania, and the workshop "Turning off the cameras," conducted by Roc Herms and Carlos Carbonell with students from 1st year of high school at the Escola Frederic Mistral-Tècnic Eulàlia in Barcelona. Additionally, we will have the presence of the artist and curator Jon Uriarte, as well as Marco De Mutiis, digital curator of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the artist Gala Hernández, recently awarded in France with the prestigious César prize.
The alien image, the mirror image
The alien image is the magical and mysterious artifact generated through AI systems, capable of taking the human eye where the camera cannot reach. This new image ecosystem not only challenges notions of 20th-century realism and traditional photographic poetics but also proposes a new and strange relationship with everyday visual technologies.
In the last session of DONE 7, we will address the alien image as a mirror that looks back at us. It is the mirror of filters and interfaces for automatic image generation that function like a gigantic selfie of the multiple visual cultures plundered to build datasets, and then remixed by obscure algorithms that replicate embedded habits and biases. But the synthetic image is also a machine that confronts us with the strangeness of our own ideas, a mirror that not only reflects but is also capable of projecting, expressing frictions and concerns for which we still do not have words.
DONE7 is curated by Bani Brusadin
CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDANCE HERE
SCHEDULE
6:00 PM Turning off the Cameras - With Carlos Carbonell and Roc Herms
After two weeks of working with first-year high school art students, we constructed a narrative of the experience with violence as the guiding thread. Is violence an implicit act in every process of change and transformation? Drawing from anecdotes and reflections that emerged during these sessions, we ponder how machine learning tools displace us when applied to creative processes.
More details about the workshop here
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6:30 PM Jon Uriarte - Images after Images
How does one reduce a concept like happiness into a series of images to make it quantifiable? The contemporary image ecosystem feeds on vast databases of images that supposedly describe other images after various layers of encoding and cultural and labor exploitation. What role do photography institutions (which until recently established photographic canons) play in the creation, exploitation, and preservation of these databases, and what role could they play? How do we dismantle the hype around these systems to focus attention and use on aspects beyond monetization and predictable degradation?
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7.15 PM The Queer Machine - With Tanit Plana and participants from the lab
The "Queer Machine" laboratory (March - April 2024) has been an experiment, a poetic and political gesture to embrace as many contradictions as possible in the exploration of so-called artificial intelligence systems. In this brief performative action, Tanit Plana and the group of creators from the lab propose that we distrust the supposed distance between us and the machine. The goal? To break the smooth, rigid, and insurmountable surfaces of powers and the images that represent them.
More details about the labhere
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7:45 PM Screening of the film "for here am i sitting in tin can far above the world" by Gala Hernández and conversation with the author
"A woman dreams of a future economic crisis that will affect the cryptocurrency market. Thousands of people have been cryogenically frozen, awaiting better times..." This video-essay spins a surprising narrative around technologies and ideological apparatuses for which the future has become a new conquest ground. Through a collage of YouTube videos, technical images, and 3D animations, artist and filmmaker Gala Hernández explores the links between different forms of speculative imagination, from financial markets to the desire for control over life and death. Premiered at the Berlinale 2024, for here am i sitting in tin can far above the world has recently been awarded at the César Awards. It was first presented in Barcelona in April 2024. Following that, there will be a conversation with the author.
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8:15 PM The Seduction of the Image. With Marco De Mutiis
How do images seduce and captivate us? How do they control, attract, or deceive us? What digital logics, shaped by the opaque and slippery structures of the network, underpin the persuasive attraction of images? What new forms of seduction have they generated? Marco De Mutiis will share the research process of the curatorial team at the Fotomuseum Winterthur regarding how seduction and desire, affection and motivation, are embedded in our contemporary visual culture.
Marco De Mutiis is the Digital Curator of the Fotomuseum Winterthur
