Art and technology go great together in their curiosity for new things and striving to translate human imagination into something tangible. Yet art’s interest in technology tends to be mystically colored. It seems happy when it comes across as dark and inaccessible as possible, as a black box, black site or black hole. The more enraptured, the better. In the course of exploring this darkness, art can provide illuminating insights into the way technology works, but it can also lose itself in the occult fog. On 27 & 28.10.2023, the Poetics of Encryption conference hosted by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and organized by digital curator Nadim Samman will be devoted to art’s ambivalent relationship to technology, with a speaker lineup that includes artists Trevor Paglen and Jon Rafman and digital culture scholar Orit Halpern.
The venue is the former Delphi silent cinema in Weißensee. Once a place where the magic of technology created images as portals into another world, the venue could not be more fitting. The etymological origin of the word “encryption” goes back to the Greek verb kryptein (to conceal), crypt being a term for an underground vault in a sacred building. The encrypted is a hidden spiritual place, and a poetic thought. Those interested in AI, VR or NFTs are better off at other conferences: Poetics of Encryption is not about technology as an artistic medium, but rather the invisible infrastructure of the internet (server farms, network connections, hordes of data workers operating in secrecy, etc.) and how we might understand our own relationship to technology.
Text: Annika von Taube / Photos: Christian Werner / Credit: Andrea Khora; Most Dismal Swamp
Annika von Taube is founder of art and technology platform and newsletter Modern Meta. She writes and develops art and talk formats and advises companies on how to use art as a strategic companion in the field of tech.
Theater im Delphi, Gustav–Adolf–Str.2, 13086 Berlin–Weißensee; map
Poetics of Encryption 27. & 28.10.2023. Opening 26.10.2023. You can find the whole program and tickets here.
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