Master's Symposium: The Probable and the Possible
Master's Symposium 2025
Master Fine Arts / Department Fine Arts ZHdK
October 22-23, room 5.K11
Wednesday, October 22
9:15 Welcome & Introduction
9:45 – 10:45 Hito Steyerl (zoom): Everything is possible (the bad news)
11:00 – 12:00 Eglė Kulbokaitė: Fictional Ground
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 17:00 Workshops (for MFA students only)
18:00 – 19:00 Sadie Plant: "Loose Ends"
Thursday, October 23
11:00 – 12:00 Roland Meyer
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 14:00 Agustina Woodgate
14:30 – 15:30 LOREM
16:00 – 17:00 Cemile Sahin
Compression, classification, and mimesis lie at the heart of generative AI. What are the implications of the representational regimes on which these techniques rely? How is meaning produced in such assemblages? How might AI be both an instrument and an obstacle in interrogating hegemony, violence, and extraction? What is the specific agency of art? And how are these insights used and applied in practice?
The MA Fine Arts at ZHdK hosts a symposium on critical artistic engagements with AI. Participants are invited to discuss their experiences of working with – or against – mediums like machine learning, games, robotics, generated video and sound. Over two days, artists and researchers will share how they address AI in their practices, while remaining focused on the political urgencies and long histories that animate them.
To think through possible spaces of defiance within the probabilities of algorithmic systems, the symposium proposes a series of talks, workshops, and a screening. Speakers include Hito Steyerl, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Cemile Sahin, LOREM, Roland Meyer, Agustina Woodgate, Onome Ekeh, and Sadie Plant.
All conversations and the screening are open to the public.
All workshops are for students only.
