Call for Abstracts:

artifices: technology, thought, art
6th interdisciplinary Ereignis conference
Gdynia, Poland and online
August 8-9, 2026
https://www.ereignis.no/events/conference/2026
http://commlist.org/archive/all/2026-all/msg00312.html

Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2026

Our contemporary world is increasingly enamored by artificiality, yet the Artificial Intelligence moniker of the latest dot-com bubble triggers profound anxieties. The idea that we can create an artificial intelligence by way of machinic technology is by no means novel in the history of culture. In the Iliad, for example, Homer speaks of Hephaestus‘ “handmaidens wrought of gold in the semblance of living maids”, characteristic by their intelligence, speech and strength. To Aristotle, technê was a craft grounded in knowledge, and in this sense AI is precisely a product of practice, an art. Thus, it can be argued that artificial is our use of encyclopedias, as much of our use of chatbots who in turn perform database searches on our behalf. Should not thinking machines, wrought by our own technological mastery, be a solace and relief?

Clearly, our concerns with AI and the potential chaos brought about by Large Language Models (LLMs) are significant and diverse. We know that LLMs can have environmental, social, juridical, and economic effects that are poorly understood, but potentially cataclysmic in force. artifices, the 6th Ereignis Conference, seeks to bring together thinking from across philosophy, social theory, and psycho-analysis to shed light on the complex emergence of AI. We approach artifice in its broadest sense: as that which is derived, non-originary, or external to traditional notions of the authentic. Relevant areas of examination and contestation are whether AI should be considered as generating a novel kind of alterity, prompting us to ask whether the Other is being reduced to a zero degree of algorithmization or manifesting as a radical new ethical encounter. Further, we can ask whether LLMs should be viewed not merely as models of cognition but as schizoanalytic desiring-machines that actively reorganize the circuits of human affect, labor, and planetary life. This necessitates a fundamental questioning of the natural/artificial distinction itself; by deconstructing this binary, we reveal how our anxieties regarding the cyborg reflect a deeper lack, forcing us to confront the structural brokenness of a humanity that has always been technologically mediated.

This conference invites new ways of positioning “thinking machines” in relation to humans through the lenses of alterity, psychoanalysis, and schizoanalysis. We seek to explore AI not as a mere model of cognition, but as a machinic assemblage that reorganizes desire, labor, and planetary forms of life. Drawing on the tension between the Other as a source of alienation (Sartre) and a source of creation (Levinas), we ask how AI functions as a Big Other or as an instansiation of the symbolic order. Beyond simple ethics or regulation, we aim to address the “cyborging” of humanity and the political task of philosophy – moving toward a post-Lacanian and Deleuzian understanding of how modes of life and care can be composed within the shadow of the machinic earth.

KEY QUESTIONS

We invite papers from across disciplines that engage one or more of these questions:

• Can we consider AI as a manifestation of Alterity itself, or does the algorithmic reduction of the Other eliminate the very possibility of unconditional hospitality?
• How does the symbolic distinction between the “natural” body and the “artificial” cyborg create new circuits of desire and lack, and what are the effects of embracing this structural ambiguity?
• In what ways does AI act as a desiring-machine (Deleuze/Guattari) that reconfigures perception, affects, and the production of subjectivity beyond the thermodynamics of information?
• Can we trace a philosophical archaeology (Agamben/Stiegler) of the thinking machine to dismantle the binary logic currently populating the debate on automation?
• Does AI serve as the ultimate source of the self’s alienation, or can it be the site where the self is constituted through a new encounter with a machinic Stranger?
• How can we move beyond the “broken” personality to develop a ludic, post-humanist analysis of AI that focuses on planetary co-existence and new modes of care?

INVITATION

We invite papers from all traditions and schools of philosophy and adjoining discipline (critical and social theory, psycho-analysis and schizoanalysis, media studies and arts, literary theory and comparative literature, etc.) to address any of the topics and questions above. Submissions should be structured, well-argued, and show evidence of rigorous scholarship. Include an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short author bio (max. 50 words).

Submit abstracts by June 1, 2026 through our online submission engine at ereignis.no. We will return by mid-June with a notification on acceptance.

HYBRID FORMAT

The conference will be held on-site in Gdynia, Poland, on August 8 and 9, 2026, and on-line for those unable to attend in person. More information about travel and accommodation is available on the conference page. For accepted papers, registration will be required by July 1, 2026.

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKER

• Prof. Sandra Meeuwsen, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• More keynotes TBA

SESSIONS

Papers are timed to 20 minutes and followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Each session is moderated.

PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES

All authors are encouraged to submit essay-versions of their presentation to a themed issue of our peer-reviewed journal, Inscriptions. Deadline for submitting full-text essays will be October 15, 2026. Note that this journal has its own criteria for submission, review and publication. For more information, see the journal‘s about page.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION

Submit abstracts by June 1, 2026 through our online submission engine. We will return to you with a notification on acceptance. Registration is required.

CONFERENCE FEE

• General attendance: €180 (standard fee).
• Reduced fee: €120 (students and the unwaged).

SCHOLASTIC COMMITTEE

• Dr. Torgeir Fjeld, Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts (chair)
• Dr. Gorica Orsholits, European Graduate School
• Prof. Dror Pimentel, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem
• Prof. Em. Jørgen Veisland, University of Gdańsk

ORGANISERS

This event is hosted by Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts and Inscriptions — a journal for contemporary thinking on art, philosophy and psycho-analysis.

MORE INFORMATION

More information about travelling to Gdynia, Poland, visa requirements, accommodation, and some information for those travelling with families is available on the conference page: https://conference.ereignis.no/.