Call for Participation:

The Other AI: Automated Intimacies
May 13, 2025 at 13:00 to 22:00
V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media, an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
And online
https://v2.nl/events/the-other-ai-automated-intimacies

You’re invited to the first one-day symposium of a research strand from the Queer Analysis Research Group, taking place at V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam on Tuesday, May 13, 2025.

The event combines queer and trans theory with psychoanalytic perspectives in relation to the automation of intimate relations and the exteriorisation of desire. Can automation—and its failures—bring something new, or invite new interpretations of old habits and fixations? Is repetition not an opening? We bring together scholars and artists in a series of talks and workshops to open up a non-normative space for thinking about the technological mediations of intimacy, especially those forms that seem to replace, replicate or extend subjectivity through AI, VR, robotics, apps or other technified forms of the libidinal drive. The event will take place in person from 13:00 to 22:00, with the 19:00 – 22:00 time slot also streamed online via V2_.

For tickets to attend ‘The Other AI’ in person or online go to: https://v2unstable.stager.co/web/tickets/111526591

SPEAKERS

Ciano Aydin (University of Twente)
Ilker Bahar (University of Amsterdam)
Rex Collins (independent artist)
Bethany Crawford (University of Amsterdam)
Laura A Dima (independent artist)
Maaike van der Horst (University of Twente)
Misha Kavka (University of Amsterdam)
Shaka McGlotten (SUNY, Purchase, New York)
Veerle van Wijngaarden (University of Amsterdam)

Note: RMA students and PhD candidates from a Dutch institution can attend the event free of charge by enrolling to receive 1 ECTS through the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA). Registration before May 9th is mandatory: email Misha Kavka at m.kavka@uva.nl to register. Include your name, institutional affiliation and programme, student number and institutional email address.

PROGRAMME

Session One (13h-15h): academic presentations:

Ilker Bahar – “Wholesome Intimacies: Repetition, Care, and Queer Worldbuilding in Virtual Reality”
Maaike van der Horst – “‘Insert Phallus Here’: Sex Robots, Uncanny Holes & Queer Wholes”
Veerle van Wijngaarden – “Thinking With/in the Glitch: Split Subjectivity and AI”

Session Two (15:30-17:30): artistic presentations:

Bethany Crawford – “The Evolutionary Obsolescence of the Evolutionary Concrescence of Bethany Crawford”
Laura A Dima (with Maaike van der Horst) – “The Alien Between Us”
Rex Collins – “By the Grace”

Session Three (19h-22h): public lectures:

Ciano Aydin, “The Quest for Wholeness: The End of Desire in the Age of AI”
Shaka McGlotten, “Hainting the Algorithm”
Misha Kavka, “The Other AI / the AI other: The Extimate Intimacy of Virtual Companions”

TICKETS

Session one + two = 10 euro
Session three = 10 euro
combi tickets (all three sessions) = 15 euro