As our interdependent ecologic, economic, and societal systems appear to be collapsing many of our hopes turn to technology. The old conundrum of whether art imitates life or life imitates art has gradually been replaced with the relationship between technology and life. Computer based social media, and games imitate the structures of our societies, and recent news suggest that AI has become sentient with Google engineers suspended (The Guardian, 12 June 2022) or even fired (Timnit Gebru. Twitter Post. 3 December 2020) for reporting so.
From search engine results to self-driving cars, from AI generated cures to algorithmically determined insurance premiums, networked technologies are politically desirable as they can provide seemingly easy fixes to real-world problems. This oversimplified and problematic view impacts on our new mechanisms of public and private governance.
Many conservative thinkers consider the body as natural, pre-political, and hence unworthy of inclusivity in the political arena. Many also consider technologies as being neutral; a knife can be used to peel an orange or to kill. Every hardware or software nevertheless is the result of the complex relations between social, cultural, and economic contexts, but few are fostering an ability to consider technologies critically, beyond the market. Some will criticise Google, Amazon, or Facebook within socio-political contexts but few do it through the lens of the technology we have developed a dependency to interface with. “Concerns and anxieties about various technologies are [nevertheless] recast as reactive fears and phobias, as irrelevant moral panics that will quickly fade away once users develop the appropriate coping strategies and upgrade their norms.“4
In contrast, and in the midst of apocalyptic political, environmental, health care, and economic crises, we are witnessing focused efforts by theorists, scientists, investigative reporters, and artists to foster understanding, and provide alternative solutions for our decaying societies and rapidly changing world.
The exhibition Interfacting life at the NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, consisting of artworks produced by EMAP artists T(n)C, Marleine van der Werf, Leon Butler, Total Refusal, Forms of Ownership, will investigate some of our not mutually beneficial interdependencies and will address the conditions, trajectories, and material contradictions the artists scrutinised revealing our profoundly reshaped attitudes and behaviours and some paths for a future.
The exhibition takes place from 9 - 30 June 2023 at NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus.
