AI: African Intelligence is a project by Manthia Diawara for the scientific residency program, initiated by GLUON. We invited researchers Tarek Besold (Chief Behavioral Officer, Alpha Health, Telefonica) and Raoul Frese (Professor of Biophysics, Faculty of Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, VU Amsterdam) for a residency in Manthia Diawara's studio in Yene, near Dakar, Senegal.
For three years, they engaged in various discussions aimed at challenging the superiority of science over the arts in the 20th century, while also seeking to contest the idea that science and technology evolve inevitably and autonomously, without the possibility of being questioned (known as technological and scientific determinism). For them, artists can play a role by experimentally bringing creative, critical, and societal ideas.
Manthia Diawara was born in Mali, West Africa. He is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University. Diawara is a prolific writer and filmmaker. His essays on art, cinema, and politics have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Libération, Mediapart et Artforum. He has published several books on African and African-American cinema. Notable films by Diawara include: An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2016), Édouard Glissant, One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008) et Rouch in Reverse (1995).
-- Production
Maumaus/Lumiar Cité
Commissioned by Gluon, Brussels
-- Supports
Snowball, Creative Europe, Horizon 2020 S+T+ARTS Programm of the European Union, Portuguese Ministry of Culture/Directorate General of the Arts