Performance: Ask Me for Those Unborn Promises that May Seem Unlikely to Happen in the Natural
On Saturday 15 November, media ethnographer, performer and curator Donatella Della Ratta performs a live ‘Feedstream’ at Framer Framed in collaboration with THE VOID (Institute of Network Cultures), exploring the speculative violence of images generated by artificial intelligence. The performance is followed by a conversation moderated by researcher Jamil Fiorino-Habib.
Generative artificial intelligence creates speculative images that, while not based on real events, remain plausible, constructing realities that have yet to unfold. Situated more in the realm of possibility than empirical certainty, these images introduce a new form of ‘synthetic realism’. They reshape the past and present through their world-building potential, and it is precisely in their apparent innocence – lacking concrete references, historical roots, genealogies or context – that they exert a silent yet profound violence against history and factual reality.
Della Ratta’s live ‘Feedstream’ performance is a hybrid live event, part essayistic lecture, part immersive audiovisual performance, created in collaboration with THE VOID (a research project by Tommaso Campagna and Jordi Viader Guerrero and Giulia Tims on tactical video and an audiovisual publishing venue for practice-based research) and features music by Daniel Leix Palumbo.
Combining text and visuals, including found footage, social media threads and AI-generated media, the work explores ‘speculative violence’: an emerging mode of the image’s existence, oscillating between explicit destruction and subtle, almost imperceptible effects.
The performance leads the audience on a disquieting journey through the violence of the not-yet-realised, navigating symbols and contemporary landscapes from Palestine to Trump’s America. It’s followed by a conversation moderated by Jamil Fiorino-Habib.
💻Stream the event here.
More info about the event on the Framer Framed website here.
