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Description
Art Is Not a Thing is a podcast series about art as a practice of critical inquiry, knowledge production and world-building. From media art, bio-art, sound art to digital activism, speculative design, or data storytelling, the series delves into artistic work that reflects on, questions, and reimagines our practices in and of the world.
The series is 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
Design: Jelena Mönch
22 Episodes
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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 wit...
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 ...
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, Marle...
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 Electron...
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 ...
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 future...
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. Ho...
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 ...
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...
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 a...
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, Spac...
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 Bri...
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...
What happens when our public behaviour is constantly monitored? Do we still hug, kiss, or allow ourselves to be vulnerable in public, does it stop us from being at our worst? In this episode, we talk to artist Noemi Iglesias Barrios and Guggenheim curator Noam Segal about surveillance systems in the public space and why we might want to 'measure' cities in terms of emotionality by training algorithms to search for signs of love on the streets. Resources: The Radicality of Love by Srećko Hor...
It’s easy to discard fakes and hoaxes as misinformation. But that might be too abrupt an ending to a discussion about the aesthetics of non-fact and the role of synthetic images in our visual landscape. In this episode, we talk to Martyna Marciniak and Jussi Parikka about synthetic images and their relationship to the material realities that (re-)/produce. Resources: The Eye of the Master by Matteo Pasquinelli Doppelganger by Naomi Klein Material Witness by Susan Schuppli Into the White by ...
In today's episode, we talk to Meredith Whittaker of Signal and artist Calin Segal about what surveillance and the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech companies mean for society. We discuss the context that made it possible for these companies to capture data without regard for privacy and use it to produce new social, cultural, and political dynamics. At the edges of what looks like an inescapable panopticon society, we find hope in the role of art, research, critical thinking,...
In this episode, we look at the historical entanglements of technology and gender. Made in the image of their (often male) designers, technologies end up serving and reproducing patriarchal systems. How can technology finally "undergo a sex change" to overcome its current gender inscriptions? What political imaginaries make that possible, or become possible through feminist approaches to technology? Host Ana-Maria Carabelea tries to answer these questions in conversation with Professor Judy W...
The changes in how information is collected, produced, and disseminated leave their mark on the way information is consumed. This episode unpacks the qualitative shifts the algorithmic dissemination of information has brought to the media landscape and how in turn that affects citizens and their engagement with the democratic processes. We talk to Marta Peirano, Nina Jankowicz & Fabian Scheidler about how mis- and disinformation alter the societal fabric and what the future of journalism ...
In this episode, we discuss how the data sets used in machine learning adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there who are fighting back. Our guest is Angie Abdilla - a palawa woman, founder, and director of Old Ways, New, whose methodology Country Centred Design, utilises Indigenous knowledges in the design of places, experiences, and critical technologies. Resources: Atlas of AI but Kate Crawford Out of the Blac...
In this episode, we discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence adopt hegemonic discourse and existing biases and, what’s more, amplify them, and we talk to some of the people out there who are fighting back. Our guests are Kasia Chmielinski (they/them) - Co-Founder of the Data Nutrition Project, an initiative that builds tools to mitigate bias in artificial intelligence - and Ndapewa Onyothi Wilhelmina Nekoto - an independent researcher & community builder, part of Masakhane...
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