LATENT SPACES: Generative AI, Art, and the Transformations of the Archive

The talk will explore how generative AI models—through their “latent spaces”—are transforming our relationship to the past, history, and the archive. If the experience of the past has always been technically mediated, AI introduces a new layer of algorithmic mediation that may reshape historicity itself. Somaini will also discuss contemporary art and experimental film projects that use generative AI to rethink the archive and the status of archival images.

Antonio Somaini is Professor of Film, Media, and Visual Culture Theory at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He served as chief curator of The World Through AI, an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris (April–September 2025, with a catalogue published by JBE Books and the Jeu de Paume), now traveling to the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt and contemporary art museums in Campinas and São Paulo, Brazil. He is also curating a new exhibition on AI and contemporary art for the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) in Lisbon.

All are welcome.