Mother

Can archaic rituals such as that of the mother’s conception, brought metaphorically into dialogue with innovation, generate new mythologies? Al code tends to be more complicated, so it’s more difficult to examine to see if anyone has slipped in some nefarious algorithms. Like all software, we want to know who produced it and why. 

Is it a trustworthy source? Is it competent? It’s a scary thought. Could we be intentionally or inadvertently creating monsters that could become our masters? If so, would they be benevolent or ruthless, and how can we control that? Retracing the definition of heterotopia enunciated by philosopher Michel Foucault, the research project Mother seeks a performative demonstration of the coexistence of a relationship between Al and the impact on the body. Mother addresses numerous thematic strands: our relationship with algorithms and the resulting virtual experience, the exploration of physical and digital space, the creative capacity of machines, or even the construction of new contemporary rituals. Again: from explorations of the relationship with the non-human to those of visions, fears and dreams related to virtual reality, from immersion in the machinic unconscious to mapping different looks at the futures that await us.

We see AI as the ultimate monster-generating instance. Monster, from the Latin: monstrum, divine sign, prodigy, but also monēre, to warn, to admonish. In Mother we confront the monstrosity of the historical moment we are living through, the deep fake, the hallucination, the creation of a parallel reality that feeds on our biases and gives us an incredibly raw image of ourselves. In Mother we question ourselves on this prodigy, we aim at bringing the creative activity of the machine to the paradox, at creating a landscape and a monstrous creature that takes on a life of its own, starting from what we have most intimately, our body.

Mother is a project for a contemporary dance performance that explores the intersection of choreography, digital technology and artificial intelligence. Mother started during 2024 as a pure research project. Our aim is now to transform it into a final contemporary dance performance/installation.