Dialogues on A Coin from Thin Air

with Carly Busta and Jak Ritger

Saturday, January 4, 4pm
932 Grand
i need to make mistakes just to learn who i am - VII, Loretta Fahrenholz, 2023

Join writer and editor Carly Busta and artist and writer Jak Ritger for a conversation about art making, AI, and value in a time of infinite content. This program continues a dialogue started by Loretta Fahrenholz during the 2023 premiere of her film Trash, The Musical alongside two bodies of early AI-generated photo-work at Fluentum in Berlin.

When the exhibition at Fluentum opened, generative-AI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E 2, and Stable Diffusion had been publicly accessible for less than a year, and the question of how text-to-image technology might change the way we think about images and truth was still open. Loretta invited Carly and Jak—both deeply involved in questions of technology’s impact on culture—to discuss these themes in relation to art making. A year and a half later, machine-learning has advanced tremendously, as has its place in the public imaginary. Carly and Jak will reprise their dialogue in the context of Loretta’s exhibition at Amant, A Coin from Thin Air.

Amant programs are always free. RSVPs are required. The conversation will take place surrounded by Loretta’s work in our gallery at 932 Grand.

Carly Busta co-runs the critical media channel New Models. She was previously editor-in-chief of Texte zur Kunst (2014-17), and an associate editor of Artforum (2008-14). Her recent essay “Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content” appears in the SS24 issue of Document journal.
Jak Ritger is an artist/writer based in Boston, Massachusetts, and one half of the concept-driven video-direction and production team TRLLM (DIIV, Kim Gordon, Boys Noize & Pussy Riot). He has supported Fahrenholz in the production of several projects including selected works currently on view at Amant. He is a core member of the New Models and DoNotResearch/JoshuaCitarella Discord servers and his writing on technology and mass social phenomena has been published by outlets such as Dazed Digital, Kaleidoscope, King Kong, and DIS.art, among others. For more, see punctr.art.