On the occasion of our exhibition project »Beyond AI: Resistance & Coexistence« in spring 2024 we warmly welcomed the artists Nkhensani Mkhari, Jazmin Morris, Vanessa Amoah Opoku & Linda Dounia Rebeiz at M.Bassy for a public panel discussion. In a private prelude on the evening bevor the opening, we had the one-off chance to record an in-depth-conversation of these leading young artists engaging in new digital technologies from a decolonial and sociopolitical perspective.

M.Bassy Podcast, Episode 4

Excerpt of the podcast recording:

Nkhensani Mkhari:

Hi everyone! My name is Nkhensani Mkhari. I am a 30-year-old post-disciplinarian artist from South Africa. I am a nomad living between Johannesburg and Cape Town. My work addresses epistemicides, thus, looking at knowledge systems that have been erased and interrupted by colonialism ect. My work looks at the past trying to find indigenous methodologies and turning them into interfaces that we can apply in contemporary context to make our lives better.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku:

My name is Vanessa Amoah Opoku. I live and work in Berlin. I call myself an interdisciplinary artist. I'm interested essentially in artist history and being in diaspora and creating homes with world building. I mostly work in mixed realities with fragments from the physical world creating new environments in the virtual world before locating them back into the physical world. I think I am doing it out of a sense of loss or maybe a bit of rage too, and a bit of revenge in a positive sense. I like the word of revenge because it's not necessarily connected to rage. It can also just be like a playful revenge, right? And I am doing it out of urgency.

Jazmin Morris:

My name is Jazmin Morris. I was born in Leeds. I worked in London for a long time, but I've just moved back to Leeds. I struggle to define myself at the moment. I just left full-time academia. I remember simulation and gaming - I was super nerdy as a kid. But I had the nerd bullied out of me. I remember sitting down to game for the first time in university again. I was building an avatar, and I noticed how problematic that process was. That sparked my interest in creative technology because I thought, “Who is making these games?”. I began exploring identity from a cyberspace perspective, and it grew into an engagement with mixed reality and critical technology. If we are existing in this space, recreating ourselves (in the digital), simulating life, how can we regain the power in that space? Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, gaming, and access. These technologies are growing rapidly, and with them, I see a rise in violence and deep divisions between those who hold power and those who don’t. My work tries to unpack that. How do we critically engage with tech while still holding on to our humanity?

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

Hi, my name is Linda Dounia Rebeiz. I'm half Senegalese, half Lebanese, and I would describe myself as a “bad artist” in the sense that my practice is about showing the systemic inequities and issues that have made it possible for people like me to never aspire to have an art career or never be represented by the arts. I think when you spoke about a sense of loss, for me it's a sense of being forgotten, almost like a disappearing breed. My culture, my family, my way of life, our way of thinking - it's all just like vanishing. Technology is becoming extractive at best and an instrument of erasure at worst. This is why I break tools, I break software, I show how stupid AI can be, I show how automation can also have its limits, I show how combination of these mediums isn't really possible and the tension it creates is really interesting.

Nkhensani Mkhari:

I think AI is an active project removing entire epistemologies, entire philosophies, entire ontologies. The question I constantly ask myself is how I can “give language” - not in the spoken word sense, but in the visual sense. My artwork on display here has these footages from the Congo of people mining for cobalt. Visually you can see how this material is found and is put in your phone and furthermore, that the entire history about where the material comes from is removed when it's in front of you. Who asks, who knows how their phone works? The makers of these devices - do they even know? I address issues of erasure by trying to find a universal language. People can understand when you juxtapose - that's the easiest way to make the public understand. You put people mining in the Congo next to an Apple factory with phones being built, and they make the connection naturally. I'm seeking a language that doesn't facilitate the process of e erasure.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

It's fascinating that we are addressing the political underpinnings of our medium because we are all using computer arts in some way. New media digital art is one of the biggest frustrations I had as a designer while I was just in the field of technology. We don't want to talk about the cost of technology. We don't want to talk about the implications of tech because we can't stop the way iPhones are made. But we can TALK about the way iPhones are made. We can show the tensions that exist in using a tool and being so dependent on its extractive nature and the damages it causes. And I use the medium of speculation (speculative archiving) because it's a power. That's my only power I feel politically. Culturally, my only power is to dream aloud and to dream alternative ways of being or existing or just engaging with the world.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku:

Navigating your spaces is really important. And building your own spaces is really important. Then you come closer to this feeling of home, right? For me this has a lot to do with virtual space because how we recognize reality is in a way virtual because it is fantastical in a way: we are building it. We are seeing the things that we want to see. We are learning about the things we want to learn. It enables me to believe if I can build my own world in the virtual space, I can also build it in the physical space.

Nkhensani Mkhari:

The idea of world making is a big part of my process, too. What makes human beings special is that as creatures we have imagination. My question is how we do imagine new epistemologies and modes of reality in the world?

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

The technology we have today feels otherworldly. We're like basically aliens compared to animals, right? We treat the world like we are aliens, like we don't need it to survive.

Jazmin Morris:

The word avatar is one that's captured me for a long time. It originates from Sanskrit, and it meant an incarnate or divine spirit in bodily form. We have applied that term to technology now. A lot of my work started in the virtual space, in world building, in VR and 3D modeling. I wanted to build a world that I fit in. That avatar thing always sticks with me. There's a term called “protopia” that I really enjoy working with. I think Kevin Kelly coined the term. He describes it as thinking about tomorrow in a way that is slightly better. A “protopia” is about asking how we can sit around this table again tomorrow in a better way. When I am world building, I want to encourage people to think in that way.

Nkhensani Mkhari:

A lot of the research that I do is thinking about the different civilizations that existed before us and try to create these interfaces. When I was at the Eastern Cape, I met a Sangoma (a highly respected healer among the Zulu people of South Africa) and we were talking about dreams thinking about the perfect space to dream – architecturally - like dream incubation spaces. The missionaries forbid his granddad to live in a circle house. He then stopped dreaming and asked himself why he was disconnected to his ancestors. It's the space! The energy doesn't flow in a square. A square has many beginnings and endings, and energy gets trapped in all those dimensions that are in that space. So, when we think about colonialism, it's so deep. We must be so surgical about it. That's why I always use the terms “remembering” and “disremembering”. It’s bone deep!

Jazmin Morris:

Hopefully, whoever may end up listening to this podcast is able to understand that we are speaking about technology for the entire time now even if it hasn't felt like that sometimes! The screen is also square and always has been. I really feel that bone deep coloniality and I also feel it in the technology sphere, too. It has been developed to a point where it wouldn't fit the circular thing – thinking about video or about coding and its linear structure. In so many ways technology is an extension of capitalism, really. I feel it has gone down such a dark path. If tech was used properly, indigenously, especially AI, I feel it was always meant to be something quite powerful. There are dreams about technology, automation and AI that run throughout history way back to BC. If you use it correctly - whether it is about the materials that are in there or the rituals around the use of tech – it could be something fantastic for humanity.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

Technology is created to help us to do stuff faster, more efficiently, to further our goals. In the last sixty years, we've done more damage to the environment than we have in the entire time we've been on earth. But at no point someone said, “Maybe the way we are doing it is wrong!” At no point did someone said, “Let's go back into the past and ask how we were able to live with plants and use plants and eat from nature, sustain ourselves with nature, heal ourselves with nature, and not make a crazy damaging impact on it!” Are there any principles of how we used to be that we can apply to tech today? Is there technology from back then that can further technology today? For example, there is this brilliant method for sewing crops in the Sahel region. There is the desert and not a lot of water, but people have been growing food there for a long time. They have figured out a way to dig holes and plant crops in a way that helps to retains the water from condensation. And you don't need as much water to grow these crops. Just look at seeds, the way we grow food, for example, seeds like rice. Today we eat maybe three to five species rice around the world, but there are hundreds of thousands of rice species that a particular population in the south of Senegal, the Jola people have tried to preserve. But then colonialism came and took all those seeds away. African slaves smuggled their seeds when they were enslaved and shipped to America. They didn't know if they were going to get food, where they were going. Thus, they smuggled seeds braiding them into their hair, weaving them into their clothes, and taking them to America. People in tech, in design - we just need to look elsewhere for inspiration!

Nkhensani Mkhari:

I don't mean to be so metaphysical, but there is a source within you, the mystery that is keeping you alive. I think we've forgotten about the mystery of what are we doing here. How are we doing it? There's an essence where we should draw from instead of those external conditions that have been imposed on us.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

What is the point of tech right now? It's to grab your attention. It's to make you pay. The internet used to be free. You used to be able to sign up for stuff for free all the time. Now free trials are so rare and binding. Now you must put a credit card to get a free trial. The internet grew as information exchange. We could chat instantly not using a phone. This was so cool. And now we are in this. I feel capitalism and anxiety are very similar. They must find a way to justify themselves and perpetrate themselves. When you have anxiety, it doesn't matter how happy you are, how stable you are, you'll find something to feel anxious about. Capitalism is the same. It used to be cotton, oil, all these natural resources. Now it’s you on your phone.

Nkhensani Mkhari:

Every once in a while, I just go detox. It's so important actually to detox - I know this as a healer. I see what it (tech) does to people – especially to their perception of themselves. What does capitalism do to your emotional wallet, to your emotional account or your spiritual account? Go outside! In “zone experiences” I find that I never touch my phone. When I'm with people that I really love and I'm enjoying myself, I barely touch my phone. Technology really gets you in those times that you spend in isolation. We need to be courageous again, to be able to spend time with people. You are not perfect. You're not a machine. You can be around people, and we are going to see that you're not perfect and you're not always going to have the right answers. But those are opportunities for you to get closer to each other!

Jazmin Morris:

Is technology emotional? I think that question is interesting. I would say no, not right now. We can see that we haven't encoded any emotion into AI. And AI is an easy way to speak about the rest of technology. The reason it doesn't have emotion is because it's an extension of us. We have got to a point where we disregard our own emotions. So why on earth would we have valued them enough to apply them to a new medium? I think there's a lot of technology that is unnecessary and it would really be nice just to go back a little. I wouldn't want to detox completely from technology. But would have loved for it to have remained more analog.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

There's an LLM (Large Language Model) project that has been trained on hundreds, thousands of hours of Maori language. It is one of the biggest archives of Maori language, and if you go on their website it says, “Big tech won't save your culture!” Obviously, the biggest repository is not the archive but the people themselves. But if you were to be wiped out tomorrow, there's an LLM that could teach Maori and that understands Maori. Those AI things can be spiritual if they carry the spirit of a community. I am a black woman, I'm a mom, I'm an artist, I'm all these things. If I decide to not participate today, I'm okay with being forgotten. I'm not saying that everyone within this specific nexus of identity should be participating, but at the same time I'm saying that we should find a way to take this technology and make it our own and at the very least, complain about how bad it is for us. I don't think we can afford to not complain, if not take this and appropriate it.

Vanessa Amoah Opoku:

We shouldn't underestimate the demise of the digital. One of the worst things to store data is digitally! Because it can just be corrupted. Are we talking about this digital world in tech as the future or is it just an intermediate (world)?

Nkhensani Mkhari:

I'm so fascinated that not once did we speak about this idea of the singularity and how AI is a progression towards singularity. AI is so anthropomorphic because all our biases, all our problems, all our goods – hopefully - are being programmed into this machine. It becomes an existential threat because we know that we are not perfect but we're creating AI in a very ecclesiastical approach to creation anyway. We are creating something that's like us. But we suck! We're great and we suck at the same time! And my proposal has always been to ask what other ways of being outside of the anthropomorphic exist that we could use as interfaces for the technologies that we create. And my suggestion has always been animism. Animism means personhood is attributable to the “more than human”. It's a very simple idea.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

AI should be designed to model mushrooms (a mycorrhiza network). Like multiple small systems of mushrooms connected to others, but very contextually specific to what they do and how they interact. If you take the map of mushrooms around the world and see how they function subterranean and work with everybody. They sustain the environment. They do so much heavy lifting in the environment, and they don't need too much to live, and they can live in any environment. And they somehow have a very sophisticated way of communicating. It's the only species that's capable of compelling other species to do certain things, whether that's trees or animals. That’s the model for AI! It doesn't have a head, it doesn't have a leader, it doesn't have a route…

Nkhensani Mkhari:

…a beginning or an end…

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

...or a reverse. And that's the only way for me to see an AI that's helpful for us. Everyone should use AI for whatever the hell they want. Because as long as it's contextual and specific, it's going to be more helpful. The way AI makes sense to me doesn't have to be the way AI makes sense to you! AI singularity would reduce all of us and would remove so much complexity. We collapsed into some kind of monocultural state which has never worked in nature and is so colonial!

Nkhensani Mkhari:

Monotheism, monoculture, mono-… colonialism tries to do that! It tries to compress things into a thing. Plurality should be the case instead.

Linda Dounia Rebeiz:

It’s violence. It's always extractive. It's always reductive. It's always non-functional. Everyone who is looking at AI outside of the anthropomorphic systems and looking at nature, you end up gravitating to mushrooms. You don't want a centralized figure of ownership or leadership and then, when it collapses, the whole system collapses. You need the power to be distributed, so that no one person has ultimate power.