January 31

Films such as Her (2013), Ex Machina (2015), and Uncanny (2015) and the series Äkte Människor and Black Mirror about intimate relationships between man and machine tumble over us. There is no escape: our life is undergoing drastic change as a result of the co-existence of ever more intelligent robots. In the West we still have our reservations. Yet developments in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China do not necessarily prove their technological advantage, but their cultural advantage. Intimate relations between humans and robots are not taboo or odd – stemming from ancient traditions, including that of the Shinto religion, which holds that everything has a soul. In the West we are now discovering the similarities between our relationships to animals and robots, and what we know about unconditional love.

Ine Gevers is a curator, writer, and an activist. Exhibitions and publications include: international exhibition Hacking Habitat: Art of Control, displayed in the former prison of Utrecht in 2016, contributing to a new sense of ‘a-whereness’ as precondition to algorithmic resistance and active digital citizenship; Yes Naturally: How Art Saves the World, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 2013, which proposed a non-anthropocentric worldview in order to become ecologically intelligent; and Niet Normaal: Difference on Display, Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, 2010 travelling to Berlin in 2011 and Liverpool in 2012. Currently she is preparing the large-scale ROBOT LOVE exhibition, 15 September – 2 December 2018, Eindhoven, asking: can we learn from robots about love? nietnormaal.nl robotlove.nl