Are We Entering a Post-Individual Era of Art?

About this episode

The episode discusses the intersection of art, technology, and human identity through the work of Christopher Kulendran Thomas and the New Museum's new exhibition.

The New Museum opens its new building this week. And it’s doing so with a big show called “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” about how artists rethought what it means to be human through technology. It’s a topic on a lot of people’s minds. Among the many artists whose visions feature in the show is Christopher Kulendran Thomas. Kulendran Thomas has a lot going on. Aside from the New Museum, he’s got another video installation up at the Museum of Modern Art right now, while last fall, his work “Peace Core” showed at Gagosian Gallery in New York. He also runs a project space, Earth, on the Lower East Side in New York and in Echo Park in L.A. Kulendran Thomas's works are complicated. They often feature paintings, inspired by A.I.-generated images. His video installations at MoMA and the New Museum involve deepfake interviews with celebrities like Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, or even other artists, together with documentary footage about Sri Lanka, where his family is from. Beneath all these complex parts, Kulendran Thomas is weaving together an ambitious and maybe even unsettling argument, about political systems, philosophy, technology, human creativity, post-human creativity…

People in this episode

Guest: Christopher Kulendran Thomas

Topics covered

• post-individual art
• technology and art
• human creativity
• political systems
• deepfake technology
• art installations

Keywords

• art
• technology
• New Museum
• Christopher Kulendran Thomas
• deepfake
• human identity
• video installation
• politics
• creativity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: New Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Gagosian Gallery

Books & works: New Humans: Memories of the Future

Places: New York, L.A., Sri Lanka

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