This series reviews two crucial unknowns regarding the future of civilization in the West: a) Has the extinction of human life ceased to be a fantasy and become a plausible reality? and b) What ideological frameworks emerge after the advent of artificial intelligence?

A talk by W.J.T. Mitchell, preceded by the following work by Max de Esteban:

A Forest (2019) 23'

A scripted monologue by the managing director of the leading Venture Capital firm investing in artificial intelligence start-ups questions the nature of reality: Are the images real? Is the voice real? But three key questions are truly being addressed: What is the ideology behind the leading investors in this technology? What are the social values at stake? What are its political implications?

W.J.T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He specializes in visual art and literature from ancient times to the present, with a specific emphasis on the relationships between visual and verbal representations in culture and iconology. He is the editor of Critical Enquiry and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society. He has written numerous essays and books. Picture Theory received the Gordon J. Laing Prize of the University of Chicago Press, and What Do Pictures Want? was awarded the James Russell Lowell Prize.

Max de Esteban is an artist whose work reflects on the relationship between the human condition, technology and the capitalist regime in the 21st century. His projects have been exhibited in museums and institutions such as Jeu de Paume, Deutsche Technikmuseum, Virreina Centre de la Imatge, CGAC and Palais de Tokyo, and he has participated in the Yokohama Triennial (2020), the Cairo Biennial (2019), the 13th Havana Biennial (2019), the 16th Fotofest Biennial (2016) and the Darmstadt Triennale (2014). He holds a PhD from the Ramon Lull University, an MBA from Stanford University and a degree in Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.