Lecture series: Without Us

“With us, the adventure of becoming human has entered a new phase,” writes philosopher Vilém Flusser in one of his most beautiful texts, Digital Apparition. The year was 1991, and by “us” he meant “those who sit in front of their computers,” “press the keys,” and “realize possibilities”: “realize alternative worlds and thereby themselves.”

It is 2026. We have tried all the key combinations and helped to build the world in which we are hardly needed anymore. Computer users have generated enough data, uploaded enough videos, photos, texts, and documents for AI slop to thrive and for the Dead Internet to zombie around forever. The world we once saw as a place where we can be ourselves—or become someone completely different—has squeezed and evaporated our dreams, producing a concentrate, a powder: easy to store and repurpose.

The digital today belongs to “ideal subjects” (Goriunova); non-playable characters write their own lore (de Seta). What does it mean to be “glitched and fragmented” (Menegon)? How does it feel to be “moss in between the sidewalks” (N.B. Spiders)? Will “we go dark when the servers go dark” (Diehm)?

Curated by Olia Lialina, net artist, professor of New Media and Post-Digital Cultures at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart; author of Digital Folklore, Turing Complete User and From My to Me.

The lectures will be streamed via Instagram Live on the Merz Akademie channel (@merzakademie).

Events
Ideal Subjects: The Abstract People of AI: April 21, 6:15pm
Talk with Olga Goriunova, author of Ideal Subjects

Algorithmic folklore: Old patterns, new phenomena: April 28, 6:15pm
Talk with Gabriele de Seta, sociologist of technology

DIY HRT: May 5, 6:15pm
Talk with N.B. Spiders, electronics and sound artist focused on queer forms of play

Becoming Chimeric: May 12, 6:15pm
Talk with Martina Menegon, artist, curator, educator and PhD researcher

Who will remember us?: May 19, 6:15pm
Talk with Cade Diehm, researcher, designer, and digital security expert

The potted history of Algorithmic Art: May 26, 6:15pm
Inaugural lecture by Danja Vasiliev, professor for Emerging Media