Antichrist Workshop
Antichrist Workshop
As technology becomes ubiquitous, introducing various high-level complexities, society and individuals are getting drowned in the sea of informational lava. A parallel development is happening in the field of machinic autonomies. More and more aspects of human life are being automated and algorithmically governed. The recent resurrection of interests in Artificial Intelligence after several AI winters and the evident advancement in AI research, Machine learning, blockchain and innovation brought about various AI ethics research and policy groups. All these groups are showing growing concerns about technological entanglement with utopian and dystopian scenarios.
Both dystopian and utopian technological scenarios see technology/AI as the primary agent where humans are becoming objects of technological ecosystems in which they are being enslaved (dystopian) or cuddled (utopian). In both of the scenarios, humans lose their exclusive subjectivity. In recent decades more actors are getting affected, such as nature, climate, animals, plants…
The main questions of AI development and technological progress can be formulated as: is the development of technological superstructure inevitable? Is resistance futile? Do we need to develop more AI and should we live with it? What is the position of designers and creatives in this race?
The name "Antichrist" for this workshop is inspired by the views of technology as an apocalyptic Antichrist that governs humanity in the End Times.
During the workshop, participants will be introduced to basic ideas concerning technological supremacy; including religious texts, contemporary conspiracy theories, singularists, texts by thinkers like Simondon, Pasquinelli, and Zuboff. The goal of the workshop is to envision possible future(s) without some key elements of the current technological development or without those elements that are on the horizon.
After the intro of roughly 30-35 minutes, participants will gather in small groups of 3 and discuss these possible futures for the next 15 minutes. Following, there will be plenary discussion and a collaborative summarizing of the main ideas.
Requirements for participants
Zoom.us application for video streaming with free account
Please check your Zoom setting before the event starts - https://zoom.us/test
Robota – Center for Advanced Studies
Robota – Center for Advanced Studies explores the ways technology is shaping society and how it changes the very substance of being human. The scope of research includes algorithmic governance, automatization, AI, the idea of nature and what is the concept of nature today, the question of work, creativity and leisure, among others. We think that technological changes today have a crucial impact on individual and society, and that both positive and negative implications should be analyzed.
Kristian Lukić is curator, artist and researcher. He is Director of Robota – Center for Advanced Studies and working in the intersection of art, technology and politics. In the last several years he is researching relation between general algorithmization and spreading of conspiracy theories, increase of occult research and so called post-reality conditions. Also he took part in Facebook research project of Share Lab with his text Colonization with Love.
From 2001 until 2006 he was working as program manager in New Media Center – kuda.org. From 2006 until 2011 he was working as curator of media practice at Museum of Contempoarary Arts Vojvodina. Also he was co-founder of Institute for Flexible Cultures and Technologies – NAPON. He curated and organized several exhibitions and conferences such are “Play Cultures” in 2007 (about game culture and politics of play), “Territories and Resources” in 2008, about web 2.0 and social networks phenomena, and “Wealth of Nations” about world of financials in 2009 in Novi Sad and in Bristol in 2010. With Stealth Unlimited group he curated Film and Video Festival “Impact” in Utrecht in October 2010. From 2010 till 2013 had run research project “Autonomies” about algorithmic regimes in art & society.