Dystopia, Utopia, or … UStopia? From Artificial Intelligence to Abundant Imagination
A lecture on the role of imagination in transforming the oppressive status quo, with an introduction by Andrew Brooks.
When Ruha Benjamin’s latest book was first announced, the publisher commissioned a cover created using an AI image generator. Little did she know, artists were already waging a fierce battle against AI companies for using "millions upon millions of copyrighted images, harvested without their creators' knowledge, let alone their consent or compensation." In time, Ruha commissioned a new cover and connected the controversy over AI-generated images to the broader struggle over technology, power, and imagination.
In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and eugenics all emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world, often deadly impacts. To fight harmful systems and create a world in which everyone can thrive, we will have to imagine things differently. Drawing on work that critically examines tech-mediated inequities and engagement with grassroots approaches to viral justice, she offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to worldbuilding that invites each of us to consider the role we play in maintaining or transforming the oppressive status quo.
Co-presented by The Power Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, as part of the Visual Research Program.
More about the Visual Research Program
People
Ruha Benjamin
Ruha Benjamin is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Ruha is the recipient fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and most recently the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship. For more info, visit ruhabenjamin.com
Andrew Brooks
Andrew Brooks is a Lecturer in Media and Cultures at UNSW whose work investigates policing and abolition, technology and social movements, race and anti-racism. He is a co-director of the UNSW Media Futures Hub, a founding member of the Infrastructural Inequalities research network, a co-editor of the publishing collective Rosa Press, and one half of the critical art collective Snack Syndicate. He is the author of Year of the Ox (Cordite Books), Inferno (Rosa), and the co-author of Homework (Discipline).
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