On Friday, 6 October 2023, the AltIași Association and its partners, including the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași), opened the exhibition Whispers of the Posthuman World. Dancing with Machines amidst Unstable Skies at the Iași International Centre for Contemporary Art – Baia Turcească, curated by Cristian Nae and Raluca Oancea.

Artists: 13m10j, Matei Bejenaru, Alexandru Berceanu, Andreas Bunte (GE), Gregory Chatonsky (FR), Ciprian Ciuclea, Floriama Cîndea, Dorin Cucicov, Dragoș Dogioiu, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm (DK), Belu Făinaru, Francois Heiser (FR), kinema ikon, Dirk Koy (SZ), Stefan Larsson (JP), Lev Manovich (RU/US), Lisa-Marleen Mantel (GE) și Laura Wagner (GE), Cătălin Marinescu, Marina Oprea, Stefan Panhans + Andrea Winkler (GE), Raluca Paraschiv, Tudor Pătrașcu, Tivon Rice (US), Cătălin Rulea.

Ars Electronica Video Screening:
Welcome to Planet B

Featuring: Tech For Democracy, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm (DK) / 06:33; Patrick and the Buttons, Francois Heiser (FR) / 02:57; Borrowed Limbs, Lisa-Marleen Mantel (DE) and Laura Wagner (DE) / 03:27; Intersect, Dirk Koy (SZ) / 18:23; mormúrō, Stefan Larsson (JP) / 08:43; Models for Environmental Literacy, Tivon Rice (US) / 36:40; Curated by Juergen Hagler, Maria-Nefeli Panetsos.

Curatorial statement:

‘I believe it is essential to understand that, regardless of the harm we have done to the Earth, we have redeemed ourselves in time by acting simultaneously as parents and midwives to cyborgs. Only they can guide Gaia through the astronomical crisis that is now imminent.’ With these visionary – yet also utopian and overly optimistic – words, James Lovelock articulated a transhumanist vision of a planetary passage from the Anthropocene – a geological epoch shaped by humanity’s industrial and capitalist-extractive footprint – to the Novocene, a historical era in which autonomous artificial intelligence would be capable of harmonising the planet’s self-regulating ecosystems. In the meantime, the corporate struggle over the commercial use of artificial intelligence has intensified. It has been framed by the media, corporate industry, and academia alike as both an ally and a threat to humanity – reinforcing, in more conservative communities, a reluctance to embrace a posthumanist approach to the future.

Whispers of the Posthuman World articulates artistic positions that employ, interrogate, visualise, and sensorially embody the multifaceted symbiosis between humans, animals, plants, and technologically produced environments, ecosystems, and assemblages, in a world where the boundaries between what is understood as natural and artificial are becoming increasingly blurred. What is at stake here is that paradoxical terrain in which the flesh of the body encounters the flesh of the world: the chiasm between seeing and being seen, touching and being touched, the visible and the invisible. Accordingly, our theoretical premises are situated at the confluence of eco-phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh with Deleuzian theories of becoming (plant, landscape, animal).

Staging an interactive and sensorially rich environment, the exhibition proposes a constellation of as yet unexplored potentialities for living-in-common and for experiencing becoming, ranging from becoming-animal to becoming-machine, in which collective intelligence – human and non-human alike – is distributed and shared equally, rather than commodified. It also explores the connections between social justice and environmental justice, and underscores a sense of urgency and planetary responsibility in the face of escalating violence against nature (masked by the more neutral phrase ‘climate change’).

The works selected for the exhibition address the ethical, ontological, aesthetic, and epistemic implications of integrating machines into our planetary future, reflecting on the ways in which they exert a profound impact not only on what we commonly describe as artistic production and knowledge production today, but also on our imagination, our experiential knowledge, and inherited ways of living and dwelling on Earth, in a world that is increasingly fragmented, uncertain, and economically and culturally unequal.

Cristian Nae and Raluca Oancea

*the title and image on the exhibition poster were generated by artificial intelligence, based on prompts entered by the exhibition’s curators

The event forms part of the project Recode: Art and Technology in a Transhumanist Context, co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN).

Organisers: AltIași Association

Partners: the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art at UNAGE Iași; the German Cultural Centre in Iași; the French Institute in Iași; the Austrian Cultural Forum

Media partners: TVR Iași; Radio România Cultural; Radio Iași; Ziarul de Iași; modernism.ro; Revista Arta

This project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for the ways in which the project’s results may be used. Responsibility lies entirely with the funding recipient.