Lisa-Marleen Mantel & Laura Juliane Wagner
Borrowed Limbs, 2022
2:57min

The short film Borrowed Limbs emphasises the mediating role of speculative design in the face of current disruptive advances in AI research. The protagonist is an AI that accesses a human body directly to gain an embodied understanding of its surroundings and complete its journey towards becoming a posthuman being. The visual language of the film is based on image synthesis on the foundation of so-called “prompts”, which oftentimes describe a complex image with just a few words and references that the AI subsequently generates on the basis of millions of learned examples. The unsteadiness of what is shown is reminiscent of early experiments on cellulose nitrate film and scarcely hints at the dramatic shifts in the (re)production of human creativity that still lie ahead…

Lisa-Marleen Mantel *1989, lives and works in Cologne
Laura Juliane Wagner *1991, lives and works in Frankfurt Main

Phantom Horizons

The on-going screening series Phantom Horizons presents digital as well as analogue works that question the paradigm of linear perspective, seeking a new kind of “status perspective” [Bedeutungsperspektive]. The latter was a development of ancient and medieval painting, in which the size of figures is determined by their hierarchical significance. Extending this approach using the methodology of deconstruction and the possibilities of contemporary film creation, the presented works open up multifaceted, unseen horizons.

Curated by Robert Seidel

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