<MoneyLab> Event: Reimagining Techno-Futures Through Creative Practice (6 feb, Utrecht, NL)

[Inte Gloerich]

  Reimagining Techno-Futures Through Creative Practice

*When: * February 6, 2025 16:00 - 17:30

*Where: * Belle van Zuylenzaal (Academiegebouw Utrecht University) 
Domplein 29 Utrecht

How can we rethink the futures of technology beyond the narrow visions 
shaped by Big Tech? Join us in exploring imaginative, creative, and 
situated technological practices that challenge the dominant narratives 
around emerging technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Powerful tech actors continuously present their visions for the future 
of technology, framing them as inevitable while obfuscating how they are 
aligned with their own economic and political agendas. These visions 
influence infrastructure, regulation, and societal norms while excluding 
the diverse perspectives and needs of communities. But technology is not 
a neutral or autonomous force—it is shaped by human decisions, and 
alternative imaginaries are possible.

This session will spotlight artistic and creative approaches to emerging 
technologies, posing questions such as: What could artificial 
intelligence become if it was framed through values like justice or 
fabulation rather than efficiency or logic? Or, how can blockchain 
systems be reimagined to serve community needs? Featuring contributions 
from artists and researchers, this session invites you to explore 
creative interventions and bottom-up approaches that redefine the 
boundaries of technology. Together, we will ask how alternative 
imaginaries can foster more inclusive, value-driven techno-futures.


    *Please register here. * <https://forms.gle/G37d1z6Q6XNLCbZA6>

Entry to the event is free and afterwards, we invite everyone to 
continue the conversation at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry’s New 
Year’s toast.


      *Speakers:*

S. de Jager <https://n-o.ooo/> is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus School 
of Philosophy and a tutor at the Willem de Kooning Academie and the 
Design Academy Eindhoven. Interests are driven by seeking ever-novel 
understandings of the computation(s) of life: from neuroendocrinology to 
the rhythmicality of social organization.

  * *Abstract of the presentation:* Technosolutionist AI promises
    consumers better living through the machine, assuming we all have
    the same problems. What values ground this promise? Sadly,
    profit-drive as the main constraint behind this enterprise
    constantly clouds all possibility of an analysis of values. However,
    they still lurk behind the face of mere profit. And whatever the
    case, within or outside technocapitalism: values are useful yet
    highly problematic cultural scripts that tend to homogenize rather
    than promote diversity. We will analyze “human sameness” as a
    denominator most things we consider ‘values’ are based upon. What do
    we assume about each other to be “the same” (even in sameness
    through difference), so that we even begin to think about acting
    collectively (in response to, with, against or for the machine)?

Penny Rafferty 
<https://www.les-nouveaux-riches.com/interview-with-penny-rafferty/> is 
an independent writer and thinker, departing from her research and 
thinking she has initiated and co-founded Black Swan DAO (2018-2022), a 
proto-institution for interdisciplinary research and practice. She is 
also the Co-Principle Investigator at Serpentine Galleries Blockchain 
R&D Lab and co-developed the think tank series Artworld DAO’s and The 
Radical Friends Sumit (2019-2022) with Ruth Catlow and Ben Vickers, in 
coordination with Serpentine Galleries, Furtherfield, Haus Der Kunst 
Munich and Goethe Institute London. In 2022 she released the book 
“Radical Friends – Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts” 
with Catlow consolidating five years of research into a toolkit for 
fierce thinking and connectivity that moved beyond the established 
systems of centralised control in the art industry and wider financial 
networks through web 3 thinking.

  * *Abstract of the presentation: *Penny argues for the establishment
    of what she calls a third wave of Decentralised Autonomous
    Organisations in which the needs of communities and their situated
    perspectives are put first. This approach is rooted in critical
    engagement with the socio-political context in which artworld DAOs
    emerged, such as the precarity and austerity that characterise
    cultural sectors. Through years of disenfranchisement, people have
    lost access to the practical and imaginative tools to define their
    own realities. Penny shows that DAOs offer a way to practice
    alternative organisational forms, to explore collective practices,
    and to world new worlds together.

Evelyn Wan <https://evelynwan.com/> is Assistant Professor in Media, 
Arts, and Society at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at 
Utrecht University. She coordinates the MA programme MA Arts and 
Society, and works on interdisciplinary curriculum innovation in the 
domain of Humane AI. Her award-winning research weaves alternative 
genealogies between historical technological inventions and contemporary 
emerging technology through the lens of decolonial media studies and 
performance studies. She also works as a dramaturg and performer between 
Europe and Asia. Her performance works are situated at the intersections 
of technology, colonial and inter-Asian ocean histories, mythology, and 
spirituality.

  * *Abstract of the presentation: *How might we imagine alternative
    futures of AI technology by excavating its deep histories and
    archaeologies? Evelyn Wan’s “Archaeologies of AI” research-creation
    project uses media archaeology to create alternative imaginaries of
    AI. Each instalment of the series is grounded in historical,
    archival, and embodied research, and focuses on a specific
    technological artefact from the past. In retelling its stories, she
    foregrounds the voices of marginalised groups—such as women, people
    of colour, and non-human entities—and their connections to
    technology. By looking at these forgotten pasts, she hopes to
    empower audiences to reimagine the paths not taken in our
    technological present, and to decentre white-capitalist tech by
    turning to AI’s multicultural contexts.

Martin Zeilinger <https://marjz.net/> (Reader in Computational Arts & 
Technology at Abertay University in Dundee/UK, and Associate Researcher 
at Orpheus Institute in Gent/BE) develops critical perspectives on 
digital art and emerging technologies, with a focus on intersections 
between scholarship, artistic research, and curation. He is the author 
of Tactical Entanglements (meson press 2021) and Structures of Belonging 
(Aksioma 2023) and publishes widely on digital art in relation to AI, 
decentralised computing, and distributed agency. Martin is also the 
co-host of xCoAx 2025 in Scotland. marjz.net <http://marjz.net>

  * *Abstract of the presentation: *Emerging technologies such as AI and
    blockchain are frequently presented as possessing powerful
    ‘disruptive’ and ‘revolutionary’ qualities. In such narratives, they
    are meant, for example, to bring about entirely new forms of
    creativity, or overcome hierarchical systems of centralised control.
    But in many of their most widespread applications, such technologies
    perpetuate inequality and exclusion, cater to elite economic and
    political agendas, and disregard key issues they promised to
    address. In this talk, I’ll explore aspects of the
    self-contradictory imaginaries through which emerging technologies
    tend to be rationalised, and consider how artists and activists
    might develop such imaginaries as critical tactics of
    ‘disintermediation’ that move us towards the promised disruptions.


      *Host: *

Inte Gloerich <https://integloerich.nl/> is a researcher and cultural 
organiser working on the political, social, and cultural implications of 
technology imaginaries. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of 
Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and connected to the 
Institute of Network Cultures. Her thesis, titled /Reimagining the Truth 
Machine: Blockchain Imaginaries between the Rational and the 
More-than-Rational /(to be defended on 3 February 2025), traces the 
entanglement of rationalism, computation, and various forms of belief in 
relation to the power dynamics and potential for radical change in 
blockchain culture. She is also about to publish a book, titled 
/Artists, Activists, and Worldbuilders on Decentralised Autonomous 
Organisations: Conversations about Funding, Self-Organisation, and 
Reclaiming the Future /(Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, Feb 
2025) featuring interviews with artists and activists that engage 
critically with the imaginative and practical promises of blockchain for 
their sector. (See more details below).


      *Partners: *

  * Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University
  * Faculty Digital Media & Creative Industries, Amsterdam University of
    Applied Sciences
  * Institute of Network Cultures


      Additionally:

This event will also be the first public presentation of /Artists, 
Activists, and Worldbuilders on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: 
Conversations about Funding, Self-Organisation, and Reclaiming the 
Future. /Free copies will be available!

*About the book:* Precarity and budget cuts plague arts and culture 
while they are still recovering from the damages of the pandemic. 
Meanwhile, extreme right wing politics spreads across the world and 
increases censorship and repression on artists and cultural 
practitioners. How can creatives come together and build solidarity and 
collective power against these threats?

This book contains conversations with artists and activists that engage 
critically with the socioeconomic setup of their sector. They activate 
communities and collectively build tools and infrastructures to 
prefigure different futures. Sharing their views on the potentials and 
pitfalls of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations – an emerging 
technology many of them use – the interviewees invite readers into the 
important and exciting space of artistic-activist reflection on, 
critique of, engagement with, and (re)imagination of these (and other) 
complex technologies.

*Interviewees:* Erik Bordeleau, Ruth Catlow, Aude Launay, Yazan Khalili, 
Penny Rafferty, and Stacco Troncoso.
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