Pastoral Landscape, 2025. Single channel video loop. Runtime 07.39. ‘I am in your dreams, but you are not in mine’.
A few months ago, on the occasion of our exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, I wrote this essay for WritersMosaic, reflecting on AI, images, language and power. You can read the full essay here.
"European Statistics originated in the 18th century and is influenced heavily by Judaeo-Christian subjectivity, asserting and then exporting the idea of the Western human. Statistical methods and Darwinian classification data-capturing methods around a desired norm affirm the notion of a ‘normal’ human and a ‘normal’ morality, which are foundational to eugenics. Although data-driven methods have since moved on, their origins remain attached to the legacy of scientific racism, and have served to create many of the social and political frameworks within which we live today, such as ethics or the definition and autonomy of the individual."
"The main problem with establishing an AI-first economy and culture, such as the one that the British Government has recently stated a desire to implement, is that this is a far more political act than it has been presented as. Implied within it is the implementation of an epistemic singularity – a supremacist way of being as the norm – which does not just apply to datasets but also to the very foundations of this technology’s architecture. Our uses of language and broad perspectives are correctively filtered using subjective moral and political guardrails to function within these mathematical frameworks. "
