Glossary
Installations
Ether’s Bloom
A Programme on Artificial Intelligence
Visual: Luis Kürschner, with kind support from Studio Linné
Ether’s Bloom marks the first part of the Programme on Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the Gropius Bau. From 10 August 2023, the works Technologies of Care (2016) and Cleaning Emotional Data (2020) by Elisa Giardina Papa as well as These Networks in Our Skin (2021) and The Cloth in the Cable (2022) by Mimi Ọnụọha will be showcased in freely accessible spaces of the Gropius Bau. Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits? (2017), the last work in Papa’s video trilogy, is a series of sixteen short video fragments. They appear daily at sunrise and sunset on the Gropius Bau website.
From 12 October 2023, Madre Drone (2019–2020) by Patricia Domínguez along with a work by Berlin-based duo kennedy+swan, which is created especially for Ether’s Bloom, will also be on view.
In addition, from 25 to 28 August 2023, the Fabmobil will offer supervised workshops for children and teenagers that promote technical understanding and open up new creative possibilities for collaborating with AI. A conversation between Elisa Giardina Papa and Mimi Ọnụọha, Missing Data, Cleaning Data, Leaving Data, will take place on 1 September 2023.
Ether’s Bloom also includes various online formats, such as a residency format (Writer in Residence: K Allado-McDowell) and the podcast Beyond and Within: AI Talks.
Ether’s Bloom is accompanied by the thinking and contemplation of cultural scientist, researcher and writer Maya Indira Ganesh, who is present throughout the year with new content and publications in various forms.
Artistic Positions
Ether’s Bloom: A Programme on Artificial Intelligence, Elisa Giardina Papa, installation view, Gropius Bau (2023)
photo: Luca Girardini
Elisa Giardina Papa
Elisa Giardina Papa’s work traces how extractive forms of AI capitalism have strained our capacities for imagining, desiring and labouring. Through political yet poetic framing, she calls attention to those aspects of our lives which, nonetheless, remain radically unruly, untranslatable and incomputable.Her video trilogy Technologies of Care (2016), Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits?? (2017) and Cleaning Emotional Data (2020) explores how labour and care are reframed by digital economies and artificial intelligence.
Ether’s Bloom: A Programme on Artificial Intelligence, Mimi Ọnụọha, installation view, Gropius Bau (2023)
photo: Luca Girardini
Mimi Ọnụọha
Mimi Ọnụọha investigates the gaps in systems of labour, ecology and relations, questioning notions of progress as it pertains to digital and archival media. The short film These Networks in Our Skin (2021) portrays women who re-wire physical cables as a way of reformatting the world and opening up new paradigms for the experiences of Black, Indigenous and hybrid histories. In showing the rewiring of the cables of history, the artist explores a ritual of awakening, trust and forgotten narratives. In the accompanying installation The Cloth in the Cable (2023), Ọnụọha embeds cables with spices, fabrics, dust and other materials, rewiring them with new meanings and ontologies. The site-specific version of the installation was realised with contributions of the Berlin-based interdisciplinary writer and poet hn. lyonga.
Media partners: BerlinArt Link
The Gropius Bau and the programme Artificial Intelligence are funded by the Minister for Culture and the Media.