Featured Event
DEMO2024
06/05/2024
11AM
Conversations · NEW INC
NEW INC and Seen Journal Present: Labor and AI
Issue launch
NEW INC and Seen journal are proud to celebrate the launch of Seen’s sixth issue at the New Museum. Join us for an event that will examine the dovetailing shifts rippling across art, film, and media: the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the twin strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). Together, these developments raise crucial questions about the future of creative labor and its conditions. Beneath the noise and doomsday predictions dominating narratives about AI and the strikes, however, lies a glimpse into the next phase of policy-making, industry standards, and media aesthetics. Building upon a featured article by writer and critic Clarkisha Kent, this program broaches this moment as a threshold of a future that is yet to be defined. Through lightning talks and discussions, guests American Artist, Stephanie Dinkins, and Suneil Sanzgiri will reflect on emerging technologies, equity, and the kind of era they want to be working in and through. Discussions will be moderated by Clarkisha Kent.
The evening’s core questions include: How can AI be used as an equitable creative tool instead of a means of replacing human touch? How can writers and actors continue making a living in an age of opaque metrics and dwindling residuals? What are data sets, how are they made, and how can individuals take back control of the content they generate?
Talks will be followed by a reception including early copies of Seen 006 available for purchase.
Tickets
This event is free of charge, though RSVP is required. Tickets are available on a first come, first-served basis.
Accessibility
Live CART captioning will be provided by StenoCaptions.
About the Participants
Seen is a journal of film, art, and visual culture, dedicated to platforming nuanced and rigorous writing by and about Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities globally. Seen is published in print, twice per year, and online monthly by BlackStar Projects, home of the annual BlackStar Film Festival.
Issue 006 (Fall/Winter)—featuring actors Colman Domingo, Danielle Deadwyler, and Lily Gladstone, and artists Charles Gaines, Jesús Hilario Reyes, Abigail Lucien, Ja’Tovia Gary, and more—is out now in print and online.
NEW INC: Expanding on the New Museum’s commitment to new art and new ideas, NEW INC is the Museum’s cultural incubator supporting creative practitioners and small businesses working across art, design, technology. Now in its tenth year, NEW INC’s membership model continues to support a diverse range of creative practitioners by providing a values-driven program and safe space for gathering and developing new creative projects and businesses. In 2020, NEW INC launched ONX Studio, an XR accelerator for artists, in partnership with the Onassis Foundation. NEW INC was cofounded in 2014 by the New Museum’s Toby Devan Lewis Director Lisa Phillips and former Deputy Director Karen Wong as the first museum-led cultural incubator.
Clarkisha Kent is a Nigerian American writer, culture critic, former columnist, and author of Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto (The Feminist Press, 2023). Her writing has been featured in outlets including Entertainment Weekly, Essence, gal-dem, PAPER, BET, HuffPost, MTV News, The Root, and more. She is also the creator of #TheKentTest, a media litmus test designed to evaluate the quality of representation that exists for Black women and women of color in film and other media.
Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist and filmmaker whose work has been screened extensively and won awards at film festivals and arts venues around the world. His first institutional solo exhibition,“Here the Earth Grows Gold,” opens at the Brooklyn Museum in late October, 2023.
American Artist makes thought experiments that mine the history of technology, race, and knowledge production, beginning with their legal name change in 2013. Their artwork primarily takes the form of sculpture, software, and video. Artist is a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation and a core faculty at Yale.
Stephanie Dinkins was recently named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in AI” (2023) and is a transmedia artist who creates platforms for dialog about race, gender, aging, and our future histories. Dinkins’s art practice employs emerging technologies, documentary practices, and social collaboration toward equity and community sovereignty. She is driven to work with communities of color to co-create more equitable, values-grounded social and technological ecosystems.