Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.
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In urban planning and geography, the concept of metabolism is frequently discussed. This organicist metaphor likens a territory to a body, traversed by flows of materials and energy that link it to its environment. From a quantitative perspective, these flows can be measured over time and space to assess what a territory consumes, processes, and produces. However, a qualitative approach is equally crucial, examining the political and social trade-offs that shape urban metabolisms. With this in mind, we spoke with two researchers, Clément Dillenseger and Pierre Desvaux, who have explored the waste sector to analyze the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin metabolism and the imaginaries that shape its perception.
In this exclusive interview, Björn Geldhof, director of the PinchuckArtCentre in Kyiv, looks at the evolution of the centre’s cultural programming since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. From an institutional space whose primary role was to open up the country to the world, the centre has evolved into a platform for committed and activist research, carrying the voice of Ukraine throughout Europe. By using art to document the conflict, the PinchukArtCentre uses a factual approach to raise awareness in the spheres of opinion and decision-making, thus affirming its role as the country’s ‘artistic arm’.
Read our discussion on the subject of generative AI with Raphaël Doan, a specialist in the sciences of Antiquity and author of the uchronia Si Rome n’avait pas chuté (If Rome hadn’t fallen), an essay imagining, with the help of AI, what might have happened if the Industrial Revolution had taken place under the Roman Empire. Through this experiment, fascinating possibilities for historical and archaeological research are outlined, as AI facilitates the processing of archives, the translation of lost languages and the deciphering of burnt texts.
Ashfika Rahman is a visual artist based in Bangladesh, who recently won the Future Generation Art Prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre in Ukraine. Faced with the overwhelming power of information systems that are serving dominant narratives, she is working on creating alternative medium of expression, giving their voice back to marginalized communities in her homeland, particularly women. Through her art, Rahman questions myths, folk tales and widely spread prejudice that are still shaping our cultures and legitimating violence, adopting a contemporary and feminist lense. We met with her to discuss her recent work, Behula These Days where she brings together ancient crafts and new techniques to share the poignant and heart-wrenching experiences of women living in one of the most floodprone areas in Bangladesh.
For Daniel Buren, architecture is an open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his site-specific work, where art and architecture meet, just like the Nuages Colorés that cover the scales of the 175 Haussmann glass roof.
L’agence PCA-STREAM dirigée par l’architecte Philippe Chiambaretta a signé en 2006 le projet de réhabilitation d’un immeuble tertiaire destiné à accueillir le tout nouveau Centre d’Art Contemporain de Kiyv. Le projet architectural s’est construit en parallèle du positionnement éditorial et de la constitution de la collection, en collaboration étroite avec le mécène du projet Viktor Pinchuk et le curateur Nicolas Bourriaud. Retour sur la genèse de ce projet ambitieux, destiné à ouvrir l’Ukraine sur le Monde.