Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

For the 27th edition of the MUR BRUT project series, Cristiana Cott Negoescu created a work for the wall in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf parking garage at Grabbeplatz 4.

What role do human beings play in the age of artificial intelligence? Can artificial intelligence interact with us humans on an equal footing? These and other questions are part of social discourses that are now more relevant than ever.

Cristiana Cott Negoescu was inspired by the authority that is increasingly granted to machines and automaton, from permission to leave the parking garage to the software that makes decisions. In response to these questions about authorization by machines, the artist presents a fortune-telling machine that interacts with viewers using artificial intelligence and issues individual predictions for the future in three steps.

Centuries-old, cross-cultural practices of fortune telling and state-of-the-art technologies collide here, intertwining different temporalities: past and future clash. While fortune telling caters to the human need for control, artificial intelligence eludes it. However, both share a mystification of the unknown, the not-quite-tangible, which results in a new entity in Collective Subconscious.

In her spectacular conceptual performances and performative installations, Cristiana Cott Negoescu deals with social, societal, and political discourses by placing them in a specific context. She appears to remain neutral, not expressing direct criticism. Instead, she gives the audience space to develop their own thoughts on what they have seen.

Cristiana Cott Negoescu graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a master class student of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2022.

Curated by Juliane Hoffmanns