Art Is Not a Thing

In this episode, Hannah Balber talks to German-Iraqi artist Nora Al-Badri about the colonial inscriptions borne by Europe’s cultural heritage. Her work, The Post-truth Museum, reignites seemingly irresolvable debates about restitution. In glitchy deepfakes, the artist puts postcolonial theory in the mouths of former museum directors (rather than institutional discourse), in an attempt to signal where discussions of restitution need to start.

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

Nora Al-Badri
The Post-truth Museum

In this episode, Hannah talks to members of the Kairos Futura collective from Nairobi, Ajax Axe, Abdul Rop and Willie Ng'ang'a. Their project, The Wild Future Lab, won this year's S+T+ARTS Prize Africa, an initiative of the European Commission, recognising pioneering projects in Africa that catalyse social change by blending science, technology, and art. The Wild Future Lab not only creates a blueprint for the future but tries to build that future with resources available in the present.

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

Kairos Futura
https://www.thefutureisonearth.org/

In this episode, Hannah talks to Golden Nica winner Paula Gaetano Adi about Guanaquerx, the first robot in history to cross the Andes Mountains. More than a technical object, Guanaquerx is a poetic, political, and collective operation that was two years in the making, involved a transdisciplinary team and fused ancestral knowledge with contemporary robotic technologies. Its symbolic crossing of the Andes hints at a new kind of revolution, one that brings about alternative technological futures.

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

Paula Gaetano Adi
https://www.paulagaetanoadi.com/ 

In the podcast episode, Hannah talks to artists Thomas Kvam and Frode Oldereid about their installation Requiem for an Exit - a piece featuring a towering robot delivering a haunting monologue about the darker side of humanity. The piece confronts audiences with the enduring legacy of human violence and the ethical responsibilities humans outsource to bureaucratic and technological structures.

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

Thomas Kvam & Frode Oldereid
https://www.oldereid-kvam.com/

In today's episode, we talk to Sarah Ciston about their award-winning project, AI War Cloud Database. The project visualises the links between everyday life technologies and military infrastructure, and reflects on the increasing automation of war.

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

Sarah Ciston:
https://sarahciston.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sarahciston/

In today’s episode, we are joined by artists Charlotte Jarvis and Zoran Srdić Janežič, and writer, educator, and curator Rick Dolphijn to discuss entities at the intersection of wetware, software, and hardware, and how they challenge our definitions of life, reproduction, parenthood, or care.

Resources:

Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family by Sophie Lewis
Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism by Silvia Federici
Testo Junkie by Paul Preciado
Humanistic Narratives by Michel Serres
Thumbelina: the culture and technology of millennials by Michel Serres
The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti
Posthuman Feminism by Rosi Braidotti
Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway
The Philosophy of Matter: A Meditation by Rick Dolphijn

Revivification (Exhibition) by Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson and Matt Gingold
Ani Liu
Ai Hasegawa
Errorarium by Adam Zaretsky

(later edits, suggested by Zoran Srdić Janežič)
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Dune by Frank Herbert
Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.  Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

In this episode, host Ana Carabelea talks to Yulia Sion, Nuno Correia, and Michael Banissy about the power of haptics and sound in recreating and conveying memories, as a way to build empathy and bridge generational gaps in the digital age.

Resources:

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion
Multisensory Experiences: Where the senses meet technology by Carlos Velasco and Marianna Obrist
When We Touch by Michael Banissy
Digital Touch by Carey Jewitt and Sara Price

Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.  Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

In this episode we talk to Lara Lesmes + Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular, Pierre Christophe Gam, and Brooklyn J. Pakathi about spaces - private, public, real, virtual, but most importantly transmedia spaces that confuse these definitions and open us to different ways of inhabiting spaces, interacting with one another, performing rituals, or building communities. 

Resources:

The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space and Time by Rasheedah Phillips
The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres

Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.  Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

Greenhouses are sites of encounter between humans, plants, and machines, as well as socio-economic and geopolitical regimes. Within them, intricate stories of our day-to-day food production are weaved out of both visible and invisible threads.  In this episode, we talk to artists Špela Petrič and Penelope Cain, and doctoral researcher Carolien Lubberhuizen about the intricacies these spaces hold.

Resources:

Seasonal Matters Rural Relations — Seasonal Neighbours
Ways of Being by James Bridle
Living Labour (documentary) by Renzo Sgolacchia
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States by Seth Holmes
Awkward Intimacies by Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko & Špela Petrič

Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.  Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

The stories we tell about, with, or for technologies matter. Can we demystify misnomers such as artificial intelligence through storytelling, role-playing, and improvisation? In this episode, we talk to dmstfctn (Francesco Tacchini and Oliver Smith) and Lawrence Lek about how they build narratives around complex computational systems.

Resources:

The Tricks of the Trade by Dario Fo
Dadda by Brood Ma
Role-play with large language models by M. Shanahan, K. McDonell & L. Reynolds 

Host & Producer: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Editing: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

The Digital Deal Podcast (currently Art Is Not a Thing) was part of European Digital Deal, a project co-funded by Creative Europe and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.  Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.