Art Is Not a Thing

In today’s episode, host Hannah Balber discusses the agency and design capabilities of fungi with our guest Feifei Zhou. Feifei is an architect and artist who co-curated Fungi. Anarchist Designers together with anthropologist Anna Tsing. The exhibition asks what happens when we stop thinking of fungi as materials or resources and instead recognize them as designers and try to learn from them about coexistence and survival, especially in time of ecological crisis. 

This episode of Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1. 

Host: Hannah Balber 
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Yazdan Zand  
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger  

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica  

Resources:
Feifei Zhou
Fungi. Anarchist Designers
terriStories 

In today’s episode, host Hannah Balber discusses digital doubles, identity and a new kind of technological theater with Finnish media artist Hanna Haaslahti. Her most recent work, Ancestors focuses on exploring the narrative possibilities of digital doubles. In an immersive room, AI-generated versions of the visitors begin to reproduce with one another. The work raises questions about identity, individualism, and kinship in the future.

This episode of Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner 
Editing: Yazdan Zand 
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger 

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica 

Resources:
Hanna Haaslahti

This episode kicks off a new season, produced in cooperation with Radio Ö1–Austria’s leading cultural voice. Today, radio journalist Hannah Balber from Radio Ö1 talks to American artist and technologist Mindy Seu about sex and its influence on the internet. Mindy’s work combines archival research on cyberfeminism, online communities, and the histories embedded in the web with experimental forms of publishing and lecturing, questioning how digital infrastructures shape power, identity and knowledge. 

Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner 
Editing: Yazdan Zand 
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger 

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica 

Resources:
A Sexual History of the Internet

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Libby Heaney. Libby’s work engages quantum processes as active constraints that undo linear causality, hierarchical relations, and the bounded subject. After a crash course into key concepts, they discuss the potential and limitations of quantum to challenge existing social and political paradigms by proposing new modes of knowledge production. 

Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea 
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner 
Editing: Yazdan Zand 
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger 

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica 

Resources:
https://libbyheaney.co.uk/ 

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Erin Robinson. Her work, XXX Machina, operates as an autonomous desire machine that generates an endless stream of synthetic erotic imagery. They discuss desire, eroticism, human intimacy, and corporeality from Lacan and Bataille, all the way to today's shift brought by artificial intelligence.

Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Yazdan Zand
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Resources:
Erotics of the Synthetic Self: Fragmentation, Excess, and the Automation of Desire in XXX Machina

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Iz Paehr to talk about inherently ableist technologies. Their work Feeling Virtual: An Archive of Touch looks at how digital technologies can be used to make cultural heritage more accessible. Challenging the sensorial hierarchies and ableist assumptions built into XR technologies, Iz explores the potential of touch and disabled ways of knowing the world around. 

Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Yazdan Zand
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Resources:
Tactile Descriptions: A Workbook

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by researcher and lecturer Alex Damianos and architect John Palmesino of Territorial Agency. Two years after the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy's decision to reject the proposal to recognise the Anthropocene as a geological unit, they discuss where the Anthropocene is today and where the debates are heading. 

Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Territorial Agency
Dr Alexander Damianos

Using both the conditions and limitations of the photographic medium, Trevor Paglen's investigations into state surveillance, military operations, and data collection raise questions about truth, deception, and imagination. In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to the American photographer, author, and geographer about UFOs, psyops, the power of manipulation, and how seeing and being seen are deeply political.

Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Trevor Paglen

In this episode, Hanna Balber talks with architect Marina Otero Verzier about the environmental cost of data centres. Challenging the image of the 'cloud' as an immaterial entity, her project, Computational Compost, uses heat from computer servers to power a vermi-composting machine, thus imagining a potential symbiotic relationship between digital technology and nature. 

Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Marina Otero Verzier

In this episode, Hannah talks to German media artist Simon Weckert about the societal impacts of digitalisation and his artistic strategies to disrupt, redirect, or reduce the logic of systems to absurdity. His work points to the vulnerability of allegedly infallible digital systems and the risks of relying on them.

Art Is Not a Thing is produced by Ars Electronica and developed in collaboration with Radio Ö1.

Host: Hannah Balber
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Hannah Balber, Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Simon Weckert