XENOCENO: A MANIFESTO IN MOTION
︎AI REAL TIME PERFORMANCE
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Is the world we perceive the only one that exists? “Xenocene” refers to the age of the non-human: plants, animals, fungi and forms of artificial intelligence. Using their own body and an AI image generator, performance and XR artist Claudix Vanesix speculates on stage about non-human life and cyborgism.
The prefix “xeno”, meaning “other” or “foreign”, signals a shift from anthropocentric reality towards a multiplicity of intelligences and forms of agency. Claudix Vanesix uses their own body, as well as texts, images and sounds from non-human species as input for the AI image generator Stable Diffusion. Vanesix combines recognition of these life forms with techno-critical activism. In this way, “Xenocene: A Manifesto in Motion“ exposes the supremacist fetishes embedded in projects such as bioengineering, cryptoeconomies, space colonization, and the race toward Artificial General Intelligence.
The performance questions human dominance over the interpretation of the world by contrasting human “reality” with the “xenoreality” produced by an AI system. Is the world we perceive the only one that exists? Or merely one perspective among many, entangled in a post-human ontology where non-human intelligences also claim agency?