Sympathy for the Devil in the Machine
Paul Chan and Paul′

Since 2018, artist Paul Chan has been developing and working in the machine learning space. He wanted to understand what this new kind of computation could and could not do for artists and writers. He also wanted to know if there were other ways machine intelligence could play a role in an artist’s life beyond empowering them to generate “content” at scale, ad nauseam, in perpetuity. In this presentation, Chan will demonstrate the latest version of Paul′ (the ′ symbol, or “prime,” is a mathematical notation for denoting a value as derivative of some original). Chan calls Paul′ a “synthetic self-portrait,” or “synth” for short. Chan will talk about the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and thanatological influences that have shaped Paul’, and give an account of his evolving understanding of what a “machine” is, what “intelligence” means, and how life (biological or synthetic) becomes enlivened or deadened by the quality of that understanding.

Paul Chan is a Chinese-American artist, writer, and publisher known for a multidisciplinary practice that spans animated video projections, public performances, and kinetic sculptures. Chan came to prominence in the early 2000s with net-based projects and moving image installations touching on aspects of war, religion, politics, and desire. Renowned works such as his The 7 Lights series (2005–07), in which projections of animated paper silhouettes immerse viewers in hypnotic loops of destruction and rebirth, and the two-channel animation My birds… trash… the future (2004), inspired by Francisco de Goya’s dark etchings and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, reflect his wide range of textual and cultural influences and interest in the use of outdated, low-tech software. Chan withdrew from artistic production from 2009 to 2014, during which time he established the experimental publishing press Badlands Unlimited. He returned to art with the solo exhibition Nonprojections for New Lovers (2015) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York on the occasion of winning the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize. His animation practices has since expanded into sculptural form with his series of motile nylon figures known as “Breathers,” first exhibited in the traveling exhibition Paul Chan: Breathers organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2022-2024). In 2022, Chan was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Sympathy for the Devil in the Machine is curated by Vic Brooks, AIR Curator at Large, and Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Artistic Director and CEO.

Image: Paul Chan. Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.