A theory of images and visual culture, today, needs a theory of latent spaces. In a historical phase in which images are more and more generated, modified, circulated, seen and described by or with the help of different kinds of AI models, we need to understand the crucial role played by an abstract, mathematical construct whose cultural and political implications could hardly be overestimated.

Latent spaces play also a central role in the contemporary artistic practices that engage with AI: whether to critically respond to its increasing presence in every aspect of culture, society, politics and economics, or to use it as a series of new tools for artistic production. For a few years now, artists have developed different strategies to explore or modify the existing, dominant latent spaces, or to produce their own alternative, antagonist, counter-hegemonic ones. Taken together, these different strategies show the awareness with which the field of contemporary art is tackling the presence and the agency of this hidden layer of mathematical abstraction that is profoundly transforming the status of images and vision, as well as the relations between images and other media.

The event is a cooperation between the Department of Film Studies (University of Zurich) and the Center for Arts and Cultural Theory (ZKK) and will be moderated by Fabienne Liptay and Roland Meyer.

Venue: Cabaret Voltaire, Spiegelgasse 1, 8001 Zurich
We are happy to invite all guests to an Apéro after the event.

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