A Long Night of Dreaming about The Future of Intelligence

Shane Denson

impulse / session starts Aug, 9 09:03pm

The future of intelligence depends crucially on the survival of unintelligibility.

Shane Denson is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and, by Courtesy, of German Studies and of Communication at Stanford University, where he also serves as Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought & Literature. His research interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to film, digital media, and serialized popular forms. He is the author of Post-Cinematic Bodies (2023), Discorrelated Images (2020), and Postnaturalism: Frankenstein, Film, and the Anthropotechnical Interface (2014).

Gala Hernández López

impulse / session starts Aug, 9 10:11pm

The future of intelligence implies acknowledging the depth of our vulnerability, the magnitude of our stupidity. 

Gala Hernández López is an artist-researcher and filmmaker. Her work articulates interdisciplinary research with the production of essay films, video installations and performances on the new modes of subjectivation specifically produced by computational digital capitalism. She examines from a feminist and critical lens the discourses and imaginaries circulating in virtual communities as symptomatic fictions of a state of the world.

Her work has been shown at DOK Leipzig, Cinéma du Réel, IndieLisboa, the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and the Salon de Montrouge, among others.

At the University Paris 8 she is currently developing a research-creation project on screen capture. She co-directs the research and creation collective after-social-networks.com

Kevin B. Lee

conversation / session starts Aug, 9 11:09pm

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.

Kevin B. Lee is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at USI Università della Svizzera italiana, supported by Swisscom. Combining filmmaking, media research and criticism, he has produced 400 video essays exploring film and media. His award-winning Transformers: The Premake introduced the “desktop documentary” format and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. His video essays Reading // Binging // Benning and Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox received the most mentions respectively in the 2017 and 2020 Sight & Sound video essay polls. His current feature documentary project Afterlives is supported by the Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Grant, the Eurimages Lab Project Award, the German Federal Ministry for Culture and Media, and Field of Vision.

Andrea E. Rizzoli

In conversation with Kevin B. Lee, session starts Aug, 9 11:09pm

Will the coevolution of man and machine evolve intelligence?

Andrea Rizzoli is Director of the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA and Professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). He holds a M.Sc. in Control Engineering (1989) and a Ph.D. in Control Engineering and Computer Science (1993).

Andrea Rizzoli is interested in the sustainability of a tired planet. His research focuses on the modelling and simulation of dynamic systems, the development of environmental decision support systems for natural resource management, and the application of artificial intelligence and operations research techniques to environmental problems.

Christopher Small

conversation / session starts Aug, 10 00:00am

Dreaming has a share in history. [They] have started wars, and wars, from the very earliest times, have determined the propriety and impropriety – indeed, the range – of dreams.
Walter Benjamin, ‘Dream Kitsch’, 1925

Christopher Small is a writer and curator. He is the editor of Outskirts Film Magazine and the project manager of the Locarno Critics Academy. He also regularly programs films online, at DAFilms.com, and at Kino Petrohradská, in Prague.

Andreas Bütler & Fabian Frey

workshop session starts Aug, 10 01:01am

We start to perceive and think as slow as pine forests.

Andreas Bütler and Fabian Frey are designers and researchers based in Zürich. Besides their individual practice they work together as the Dialoguing with Ecologies Group on speculative forms of dialogue with other species and ecologies. This research leads them from biochemical experiments, over embodied experiences to discussions between humans and non-humans. The work questions the relationships between different forms of intelligence and envisions practices for mutual understanding.

Anna De Mezzo

workshop session (together with Wailea Zülch) starts Aug, 10 02:02am

Molding meanings, molten boundaries, a multitude: mystery.

Anna is a Zurich-based visual designer with extensive experience in design research, futures studies and art direction. She holds a MSc in Design & Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and works at the intersection between design and futures research.

In her work, Anna focuses on various design practices as means to tackle the relationship between humans and uncertainty, particularly the one related to the perception of the future. She is also a creative fellow at the Creative Impact Research Centre Europe (CIRCE) where she is conducting research on the topic of privilege in local settings.

Wailea Zülch

workshop session (together with Anna De Mezzo) starts Aug, 10 02:02am

A kaleidoscope, colorful reflections: To actively be arranged, time over time again.

Wailea has a multifaceted political science, futures and strategic foresight background. Working for the foreign policy grassroots think tank foraus has made her a specialist in participatory processes. Her studies in Political Science (MSc), Law, Management, Cultural Studies, and Languages have led her to the Universities of Versailles, Amsterdam and the Zurich University of Applied Science. Based in Zurich, she enjoys experimenting with methodologies, knowledge practices, and communication forms to challenge disciplinary paradigms and build bridges. Nowadays, she works in varied constellations to deepen and share her understanding of futures thinking, value creation and appreciation, and regenerative innovation. Exploring the landscape of knowledge-transmission possibilities.

AATB

conversation / session starts Aug, 10 03:33am

AATB is the collaborative practice of Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet, both graduates from ECAL. Having previously worked on interactive objects and installations, they encountered an industrial robotic arm five years ago. This crystallized an ongoing research around human/machine interactions and led them to investigate the potential of robotics and industrial automation to exist outside the realm of factory floors.

Their practice involves a tight connection and understanding of manufacturing processes, ranging from software programming, electronics to mechanical engineering and precision machining. Reflecting on the dissemination and assimilation of robotics into mundane activities, their work critically explores novel situations arising from these shifts. Since 2020, the studio operates a Motion Control service for the film industry: Superposition.

Justine Knuchel

workshop session starts Aug, 10 03:33am

Only loving, only knowing matter.
Not the fact of having loved, or having known.
(Pasolini)

From an early age, Justine Stella Knuchel became accustomed to the cameras around her and to a life punctuated by artistic creations. While cinema and images remain the backdrop of her projects, the desire to broaden the dialogue with the audience by constantly renewing forms and media serves as her compass: today she works as a curator and multimedia artist. 

Since 2019, she's the curator of the exhibitions and original creations of BaseCamp, an interdisciplinary creative centre for young talents of the Locarno Film Festival. In both her creative and curatorial work, she is fascinated by the permeability between disciplines.

Anthony Bekirov

workshop session starts Aug, 10 03:33am

"We fail to see ourselves in the machines we create, and thus we fail to see that their powers are ours as well – for we are the very Gods which we fear.“

Anthony Bekirov is a writer, researcher and editor-in-chief for Lausanne-based movie magazine Ciné-Feuilles. He holds a Bachelor degree in Philosophy, Latin and Cinema/Art History at the University of Lausanne, as well as a Master’s degree in Japanese Studies at Geneva University. Alongside, he has contributed several publications and talks on the topic of digital media and video games. In 2021, he was a member of the organising committee for the 3-day long symposium “Visual Contagions Through the Lens of New Media” at Geneva University. Currently, he is working on a Ph.D on the topic of sexuality and gender in Japanese media. His work is driven by a long-standing passion for cinema, literature and Japan.

Thomas Meinecke

performance / session starts Aug, 10 04:32am

I am ardently interested in the present. I gain insights into the future in thinking and writing through successively more precise glimpses of the past, hashtag: the postmodern premodern. (Which came before?)

Thomas Meinecke is a writer, musician and radio DJ. Since 1980 he has been playing with his band F.S.K., whose albums have been released on Daniel Richter's Buback label. He participated in joint electronic projects with Move D. and worked as a radio DJ at Bayerischer Rundfunk (1983 - 2021) and as a DJ in clubs such as Berghain, Robert Johnson, Pudel Club. He runs the dialogue-based event series "Plattenspieler" (2007 – 2020) at Berlin's Theater Hebbel am Ufer, since 2022 at Berlin's Volksbühne.
Most recently he was Writer in Residence at the University of St. Andrew, Scotland, and lectured poetics and gender at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. His novels and stories have been published by Suhrkamp since 1986, including his novel Selbst (2016). He has received numerous awards, including the Berlin Literature Prize in 2020, and a guest professorship at the FU Berlin. In 2021 "Text + Kritik" published a volume on his work, in 2022 Verbrecher Verlag published his poetological reader Ozeanisch Schreiben.

Laura Papke

performance / session starts Aug, 10 05:32am

Technology will be an ally on our inner journey, empowering us to rediscover the knowledge of our bodies.

Laura Papke is an interdisciplinary designer and artistic researcher, currently living and working in the Netherlands. With a keen interest in the intersection of ecology, culture, and mental health, her work investigates new perspectives on healing processes and care practices in a technology-driven world. She brings together science and spirituality, drawing inspiration from queer ecologies, techno-feminism, and shamanic practices.
Her graduation project in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven Sonic Driving was nominated for the Planetree Design Award 2022 and presented at various events, including Dutch Design Week 2022 and New Now Festival 2023. Laura is recently continuing her research on interoception — the perception of inner-body activities — and the process of synchronization, which she further incorporates in her embodied sound experiences.