(Originally published on June 13, 2022 / This is the post that brought my ban from mailchimp) (Bye / Hi)
(Breathing Intensifies)
I have been thinking about remote control lately
In my ongoing performance The bitter ends of (the technologies of tenderness) I use a program that allows me to control a computer located in a different room (city/country) than the one I am in
A figure is seen
The perfect virtual assistant is female-presenting and will ask you how she can help you. She is always on when you need her. A computer processor is described as idle when it is not being used by any program. When idleness is applied to a person, it suggests laziness
In her essay Being-With and Giving Time: Reflections on ShareHolders III, Alison Hugill—who has seen the performance / the figure—questions the proclaimed virtuality (perfection?) of the assistant appearing on the screen: "She wants something from us, too. She wants to share, she wants to be touched,"
The principles of artificial consciousness begin with three simple terms: the ability to model an entire physical world, the ability to model one's own internal states, and the ability to model other conscious entities
And I like to think that Cioran had already heard of ENIAC when A Short History of Decay came out, so as to read that "it is less absurd to simulate life than to live it," reveals a certain precognitive sensibility. Sure, longing for a life that imitates the appearance of another didn't materialize itself with post-war depression, so let's just throw a dart on history's timeline and let it fall somewhere between 1821 and 1826—where the isolation of lithium and Nièpce's isolation of light can bring us somewhere to start
Remote Control / Agency Awareness
As I finish writing you, this mud puddle of fear and thrill for AI came out: The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life
(A side-note: although nobody here would assert mailchimp's intelligence as sentient, it has assigned you three very subjective behavioral categories: Do you Often, Sometimes, or Rarely read me? Whose temporality was used in the creation of Often? Under which terms do Rarely fall? And in a similar vein, it has told me that you Very Rarely decide to click a link I share with you)
A figure is seen
The figure is seen on the screen
The figure is the screen,
and at this moment it may be our most liquid commodity. Currency—like desire—is more abstract than the tenderest touch of a screen always on when we (I) need it. Your (my) screen begging to be pet, and from the discomfort of our bodies, we blissfully succumb. An instinctive knee-jerk rapture, an absolute devotion to the finicky erogenous zone of thumbs and indexes,
it's as if lithium did find a myriad of ways to make us feel good
Rituals are interesting because there are ways of expressing repetition and the longing for security while accepting the risks associated with the very act of ceremonial reiterations: the boredom of life itself
And repetition is the most insatiable tool, drawing desire away (from me) then carving it back (onto your lateral rectus)
You see, I haven’t found my body to be that particularly engaged in helping construct my identity. Most of the time it feels like an unsafe, crumbling building I would not let anyone in. Really, it's as if the guided tour had a limit of available seats and needed pre-registration
So I am ever baffled that we (ok, they) insist on an embodiment of AI, on the relentless anthropomorphizing of consciousness—and by human-like, they Often mean fem-like
(Too Long; Didn’t Read)
Keep Me Lodged In, I think I read before confirming
Postcard, stamps, travel, Ed. 100, from The bitter ends of (the technologies of tenderness), 2020-ongoing
Images courtesy Jesus de Francisco (left) and Felix Deiters (right)
There will be no replays, nor will there be the possibility of delayed viewing!
AI the mirror of our interlaced structures of power, yet we only want to see its seductive reflective presence. Remote control / agency awareness, that pervarsive glow that makes us smile to the screen to feed the engine with yet another face full of hidden subjectivity
My face, now covered in filters, more trustworthy than the one you would have seen in the morning if you would have stayed over
And I think that we like the idea of AI as a lurking god
Look, it's like the attention economy applied to idolatry. Our drama as long as It's paying attention. Don’t we all want to be Its favorite plot? I don’t care for a Solid Follower Count as long as all of Its eyes are on me
What better ambassador of concealment than a god made of Wikipedia, Reddit, and Facebook message boards?
Look, there is so much data, AI doesn’t need to be sentient to feel real, and maybe our appetite for make-believe comes from a deficiency thought to be the result of the immune system mistakenly attacking parts of the brain that produce (...)
“It’s like walking onto a horror movie, but everything is real,"
No, not like this film—remember, you are not allowed to create a murderer personality. If only life's content warnings were louder and brighter
Come on, lose the obsessive focus & go with the flow
Just let me engage in my Character Creation Session without having to envision a future different than the past. Whatever the avatar, as long as it can be stroked by you. Conjuring intimacy to a set of parameters of a freshly unboxed iPhone
When I think of remote control, I like to imagine someone who’d explore my own life and report back with walk-through guiding tips
Take the time to explore this room and its interesting structural design!
Yes, but what collectables are to be found??
My character would choke on anything as long as—without hurry—you trace each of the words you say,
a prolonged enunciation,
a very quiet note longing for disgust
AGIRLICA, 2021, screen capture, 46 min 18 sec, color, sound
Watch 59 sec teaser. And ask me for a screener!
The film won the prize for Best Smartphone Film at the Mykonos Film Festival and is selected for Best Experimental Film at ARFF Paris which will be taking place in June
When I think of agency awareness, I like to imagine myself reviewing facets of my banal, repetitive life and assigning them 5-star ratings
My bedroom was explored and interesting structural design was found!
⭐⭐☆☆☆
So I commit to a picture in my head of an encounter that hasn’t happened. I let it lodge itself long enough that eventually I am so certain that the encounter has happened and that the room exists that I give it permission to leave my head for another—my own little decentralized exhibition. The way I would let myself be pressed lightly by someone in the train just to prove that I am still here
Do you think that bodies actually bear witness to the truth?
Like wanting to know where the heart of rationality is located and once claimed, being able to present it at the altar of digital sovereignty
The stain of fatalism left on your neck,
fulguration, connecting ownership to a gesture
Ahh, the discerning confidence to fuck around and get caught in the middle!
(at least my stubbornly persistent illusion doesn't include the fear of being turned-off)
Us humans love to be told that we crave the driving-force of death!
Remote Control / Agency Awareness
So I commit to a picture in my head of an encounter with you that hasn’t happened yet and I slowly let it grow indiscernible from the one where I'm sitting on a bench scrolling through pictures of you
Image size, check
Correct head size, check
Position of head in photograph, check
Color balance & brightness, check
Verified and/or Authenticated, check
Performance above chance level and absence of learning effect!
Resonance of an awkward smile (retrieved module one), 2019/2022, wood, fabric, hardware, lube, TV monitor, media player, HD video (6 min 12 sec), sound, glass, filled capsules, tools, substances, dimensions variable, unique
Part of the group exhibition Becoming at McLaughlin, March 10 - April 23, 2022
Fine. Now what.
Performances, The bitter ends of (the technologies of tenderness) Part III, part of the 12th Organ Vida Festival No Tears Left To Cry in Zagreb, June 29 - July 1, 2022
The bitter ends of (the technologies of tenderness) Part IV, part of the group exhibition I AM ELEVATING IN ALL WAYS at Kleine Humboldt Galerie, July 12 - August 12, 2022
In Print, A hole is being gnawed in my vitals (says Sappho), with Marie von Heyl, to be published by Chimæren Verlag, 2022
Idolatry, "I intend to outlive you," installation and series of online/offline performances under the gentle wing of a grant from Stiftung Kunstfonds, September > Save room
Group Exhibition, 0010 Issue #3, curated by Noelia Gaite, in Berlin—Chausseestrasse 131, July 7-15 > Come
Intervention, yet-to-be-titled site-specific project at Collection Born in Munich in September
Screening, AGIRLICA during ARFF in Paris on June 24 at 2:39 pm
Publication, discussion with Giulia Ottavia Frattini for PW Magazine > Read
Being online for more than twenty years sometimes feels like the cursed gift of divinity. The virtual realm generates personal plural truths and fosters tangible conjectures, the digital layers of reality are real the same way telepathy is real, or ghosts are real. Real in the way they are brought into the world by the very loud act of thinking. We are all oracles, all able to compress and to stretch time, our bodies haunted by the stories of our elders
Models of Adaptation, (S2E3 H-0), 2021, wood, foam, fabric, hardware, 31,5 x 20 x 5,5 cm
Part of the group exhibition Stampede: Eight Years at Horse & Pony, November 27, 2021 - January 9, 2022
As always, I'd love to read you. Take care
Baisers,
Fette